Morphine
by FeverFeed
Summary: Prompt fill: "Aidan builds up an immunity to werewolf blood." Eventual slash. Spoilers up through season 3, episode 8 of the US version of Being Human.
1. The deal

_Prompt fill: "Aidan builds up an immunity to werewolf blood." Eventual slash. Spoilers up through season 3, episode 8 of the US version of Being Human. I've only watched up to episode 8 myself, so no spoilers past that point._

* * *

It was all for nothing.

Of all the things for Josh to dream up in the dark before the dawn, his arm still raw with Liam's marks, the curse already flooding his bloodstream with each inevitable beat of his heart, it is how he killed a man for nothing.

It's a difficult thing, to give to the family of a dead man without giving away that he was the one who murdered Ray. It was a stroke of luck that his wife was a woman of faith, and that her church had already made a habit of dropping off food and goods to the family from time to time. It hadn't been overly difficult to slip some donations into their mailbox in the wee hours of the morning with a simple envelop that read, "A gift from the friends of Williamsburg Baptist Church." So far Ray's wife and son hadn't caught on, and while it hadn't done anything to stave off the encroaching wall of guilt Josh felt over the past year and a half since the incident, it was at least something.

Now that something was for nothing. Josh had been free of the curse for a year and a half, had been unable to even free Nora from it, and now here he was, the scared teen in the woods outside of Ithaca all over again, gash marks on his body and disease in his heart. He was back at square one.

Except, no, he was not back at square one, because at least when this whole nightmare began four years ago he'd had Aidan, Aidan who was strange, a stranger, but not dying in the basement downstairs, dying because like always, Josh had been too late. Too late into his change to keep from mauling Nora's arm as he pushed her from the room; too late to tell Julia the truth, to spare her life. He was never enough to protect the ones he loved, and somewhere inside he felt a weak chuckle break through the still surface. Perhaps he had a taste of what it was like to be Aidan now, a fraction of the guilt and self-loathing the vampire felt at his own long line of losses.

Josh knew they all needed to be alone right now, though he wouldn't have known what to say to Aidan even if he had wanted company. Aidan was the one with the calling to the dead and dying, the one who was able to soothe the terminally ill from one life to the next. Aidan had been born and bred amongst death, and Josh was sure if their positions were reversed he'd have a better idea how to approach his doomed roommate, the sort of comfort to offer. But what could he say? What was there? _Sorry that you're dying, but hey, 260-odd years is a pretty good run! Sorry that my fiance's former friends' psychotic father injected you with the vampire black death. But hey, there's a silver lining for everything, right? At least while you're dying you don't have to be picky about who you feed from anymore!_

A broken, choked out sound ripped itself free from Josh's throat, but no tears would come. Instead he screwed his eyes shut and tried to breathe, feeling the panic attack coming on slow, the worst kind that took their time to build up and bowled him over into pieces when they broke over him. It wasn't real, as much as the bitter, defeated voice inside him turned to his old friend, sarcasm, to cope. Aidan wasn't dying, not after everything he'd—they'd been through. It wasn't real to him and no creeping, dark marks or wretched, full-bodied coughs could make it real.

* * *

It was all for nothing.

At least if Liam had killed him the older wolf might have felt vindicated for Connor and Brynne. Maybe he would have considered it square and forgiven Josh and Nora for shielding their killer. It would have made sense, and Liam didn't seem like the kind who would kill one of his own if there was someone else to take the blame. Josh and Nora could have been free and clear, Aidan would be somewhere where he couldn't hurt anyone ever again, and all the loose ends—the ones he could reach, anyway—would have been tied up, finally.

Instead Josh had been tangled up in his mess once again, had put his life—his fragile, human life—on the line for him once more. Instead he was lying in the dank basement, staring at the ceiling, marveling at the feeling of the sickness running rampant through his body.

After all that Aidan was going to die anyway.

And Josh was—Aidan rolled over and out of bed, the frenetic energy snapping through him and demanding that he move, senselessly, purposelessly through the room. He could feel the cough building up inside him but held his breath, as if doing so could do more than forestall the inevitable.

He heard him coming late, and by the time he realized Josh was halfway down the stairs to his room the cough had built up inside him, held back by a dam of toothpicks. He didn't want to be sick in front of him, but even as he swallowed hard around the thick, wretched block in his throat, he knew it was pointless. The way Henry had looked at the end—how he'd woken, eyes glassy with their version of fever, dazed, not knowing where he was and weak as a newborn—Aidan would not be able to hide this ugly process from Josh.

Josh knocked, softly, and Aidan cleared his throat the best he could before rumbling out a, "Come in," in a weird approximation of his real voice. The door opened a crack, like Josh was intruding in a room in the ICU, and Aidan grimaced.

"Come in, Josh. I'm not dead—I'm not 're-dead,' yet."

His roommate peered into his basement quarters, that familiar doe-eyed, sad look on his face that Nora had once commented on so long ago. Josh cleared his throat and closed the door behind him, leaning against it. Aidan noticed he was hiding his torn-up arm behind his back, trying to be casual about it. A wry smile came to his face as he realized they were both trying to protect each other from the harsh truths, even now.

"How are you—I mean, that's stupid. 'How are you feeling,' I don't know what I… just. Do you, is it okay if I…"

"Yeah, of course," Aidan said, sitting down heavily on the bed and patting the vacated side for Josh to join him. He did, still tucking the injured arm subtly out of sight. Josh wasn't looking at him anymore, while Aidan meanwhile couldn't seem to look away from the side of his friend's face. The silence that settled in on them wasn't necessarily awkward, but it wasn't good, either.

He would have thought Josh would have craved solitude after tonight, but perhaps he'd read him wrong. Instead Aidan turned to face forward, finally, and took in a deep breath through his nose to calm the burning in his lungs. His eyes watered from the deep, watery tickle in his throat, but something else caught his attention as well.

"You don't… smell wolf-y, yet," Aidan commented, realizing a second after he said it that this was probably not something Josh wanted to talk about. To his surprise Josh didn't cringe or grimace at the mention of his re-established condition, instead peering at him out of the corner of his eye like he was afraid to look at him headlong.

"Oh?" Josh asked, breathing in rapidly a few times through his nose as if he would be able to smell himself. Aidan smiled slightly, the muscles needed for that expression feeling rusty and disused. Josh frowned, his shoulders moving in a gentle, tired shrug. "Maybe it's because I haven't had my first transformation yet?"

"Maybe," Aidan agreed, leaning over to sniff at Josh's shoulder once more, mainly just to keep them talking. What had meant to be a light, teasing gesture gave way to something different, though, as Aidan found himself pausing over the crook of Josh's neck, letting his eyes slip shut. No, he definitely didn't smell like a wolf yet, even though the curse was well on its way to tainting all of his cells now. All Josh smelt like was blood, moving thick and quick beneath skin that was still alive with the buzz of the adrenaline of the night. He must be nervous, or in some sort of emotionally heightened state, since it had been over two hours since they'd gotten home from their scrape with Liam.

"You—" Aidan jerked at Josh's voice, snapping out of whatever world he'd been lost in. Josh was going on and Aidan struggled to tune in to what he was saying. "We… look." Josh turned to face him in full, looking up at him with his chin tilted down in that way he always did. "We're going to find a way to beat this. Okay?"

For a moment Aidan didn't know what he was talking about. Then it clicked and the first thing that occurred to him to do was to laugh. He managed not to, but couldn't stop the bemused, bewildered smirk that quirked up the edge of his mouth. "You—_this?" _Aidan asked, gesturing to his broken, dying body as a whole. "Josh—"

"No," Josh said, shaking his head and lifting his good arm to stop Aidan from going on. "I know what you're thinking, and I know you're—you're already giving up, in some—some corner of your mind, up there. But, no. First thing tomorrow I'm heading down to the hospital, and I'm coming back with options."

"... Options?" Aidan asked, feeling suddenly adrift in this conversation. "What, exactly, are we talking about, here?"

"The way I see it," Josh said, now on a roll, his eyes wider than normal and his good arm gesturing in the air, like he could form the plan tangibly in front of them, "It can't hurt to try different vaccines and booster shots at this point. Right?"

"Uh…" Aidan said, brow furrowing as he made a flippant gesture in the air. "Yeah, for argument's sake, okay. I suppose not. But, Josh—don't you think other vampires have _tried _that, already? Don't you think if it was as simple as getting a stim of antibiotics or taking a five-day trial of TamiFlu, someone would have spread that news by now?"

"Maybe, but maybe not." Josh was bordering on manic now, completely facing Aidan and forgetting to hide his wounded arm in his wild, energetic need to convince him of this plan. "You know better than anyone else how underhanded and self-serving your people can be. No offense," he tacked on, and Aidan actually did laugh out loud at that, unable to stop himself.

"None taken," he said, executing an ironic flourish of a half-bow. If Josh noticed how little Aidan was buying into this pipe dream, he didn't show it, instead barreling on.

"So, just—just, hear me out, okay? Hear me out. Say there is a way to fix this—and there is," he added, punctuating that word like he actually had some sort of insider info to share that was based on anything other than wild, delusional hope. "It wouldn't be _so _out of the realm of possibility that not all vampires who discovered a cure would want to share it, right? I mean, when there's less to compete with, those who remain wind up in positions of power. Right?"

It was far too late at night and Aidan was far too battered and tired to follow Josh's ramblings. He shook his head, already mentally disengaging, and looked out over the floor, longingly thinking about sweet unconsciousness that could be his in mere moments. He didn't jump when Josh touched his chin and made him face him again, but it was a close thing. Then he noticed that Josh was trembling.

"Josh—" Aidan said, alarmed now, and instinctively he put his hand over the one Josh had against the side of his face. "You—are _you _okay?" he asked, frowning and peering into his face, looking for cracks where the panic would start leaking out.

"I just, can't deal with this if you've already given up. If you're already gone." To Aidan's utmost surprise, Josh's voice broke on the last word and his hand jerked so hard Aidan almost thought he'd meant to hit him. But no, he was just shaking, and not with fear or cold. It was pure, desperate energy that was quaking through his roommate, demanding that he cook up these half-baked plans at three in the morning before it would let him free of its electric grasp. Aidan had seen Josh freaking out more times than he could possibly count, but never quite like this. Despair, fear, frustration had always been key ingredients before, and the man had usually preferred to curl in on himself, avoiding eye contact and riding it out in his own twitchy, distracted way.

It wasn't like this, never like this. Josh had both of his hands on either side of Aidan's face, keeping him there like he actually had the strength to force him if he needed to. Aidan was powerless to do anything but stare back, noting the way the brown eyes he knew so well had darkened over into a color he would have almost thought was his own. "You have to promise me, Aidan," Josh spoke, snapping Aidan out of another of his reveries, "That you have not already given up on me, on Sally, or Nora, on _life, _on any of this." He lowered one of his hands to gesture to the air between the two of them, the backs of his fingers actually brushing against Aidan's chest before the same hand reached forward and splayed itself, fingers flat, against Josh's own chest. "I know it's bleak. I know it's bad. But you have to promise me you won't go down without one hell of a fight."

Aidan knew the speech was supposed to be motivational, something to make him feel better. It didn't necessarily make him feel worse, either, though. It was an emotion that existed somewhere in limbo, and all Aidan could do was say what he knew Josh needed to hear. "Of course I'm open to ideas, man. I'm gonna do my best. Just like I know you're going to, for me." He put his hand back on the one that was still resting against Aidan's cheek and gave Josh a crooked, quirked smile. "Okay? You alright?"

* * *

"Drink me," Josh said.

"... Excuse me?" Aidan asked.

_Mind cluing me in on that too, while you're at it? _Josh's inner voice snarked.

Josh shook his head, still full of the pre-panic attack energy. Trying to keep his thoughts straight was a nightmare. _Use your words. _"Okay. Way I see it, you're… sick. It's sort of… negligible, at this point, to keep trying to find a clean supply. Right?"

"Yes, but, Josh, you're a—"

"Let," Josh interjected, his voice higher than he had wanted it to be. He lowered it and took a quick version of a 'slow, deep breath.' "Let me explain. I know I'm a wolf, but—just now, you said I don't smell like one yet. Right?" With that Josh moved closer, turning his neck to Aidan so he could verify it again.

The reaction was instantaneous. Aidan reeled back, putting as much distance between himself and Josh as possible as if Josh's neck would hurt him. Josh blanched and backed off, barely fighting off the urge to smell himself even though he had confirmed that he was immune to his own scent.

"Oh. I'm sorry, was I wrong? Did it just, like, kick in right now?"

"No," Aidan said, getting to his feet now and pacing the room.

"No?" Josh affirmed, also getting up but staying at his spot near the bed, watching Aidan's restless progress across the floor. "So, I don't smell like a dog yet?"

"No, Josh," Aidan said, turning to face him and whipping out the blinding sarcasm they used on each other when frustrated. "You smell peachy-keen. You smell great. You smell delicious. You also are rambling incessantly and not making any sense, so you are _delusional _if yuo think I'm going to drink your blood when you're like this."

"Ah—" Josh said, putting up a finger to pin down the piece of relevant information Aidan had let slip. "But that doesn't mean you won't _ever _drink my blood."

"Josh, what the hell? What are you hoping to achieve?" The last word sounded like a plaintive plea.

"I want to see if we can make you stronger!" Josh insisted, taking a step forward to invade Aidan's personal space but realizing his mistake and holding his ground at the last minute. "If you taste me, just a drop, and it's all—wolfy and disgusting, then, okay, didn't work. Now we know. _But,_" he demanded, moving to keep pace with Aidan, who was now turning away from him to head to the other corner of the room, "If you try me, and it's fine, no wolf side-effects, then we can at least get you a steady source of _food. Food, _Aidan! God, how long has it been since you _really, really _fed?"

"Months, Josh! You know that! And do you know why? Because every single human this side of the equator has had that flu that's responsible for _this!" _He gestured to his body again, his movements erratic and—Josh only realized it now—angry. "You too! Even if your blood hasn't developed the taint that makes me sick yet, I'm still just drinking more and more infected blood. I don't see how, in your grand little scheme here, that helps anyone."

"It can't hurt you at this point, Aidan, and the benefit outweighs the risk. If you aren't strong, if you aren't eating regularly, you're just going to—"

He froze. It was not a simple clamp down on a word he didn't want to say. It was a full-bodied, mind, heart and soul freeze. Aidan caught it immediately and at once all the anger disappeared. Just like that, his best friend was back, eyes wide, brow low, edging closer to Josh to see if he was okay.

"Josh?" Aidan tried softly, and finally the dam broke and it all became real.

"You're going to die," Josh said, his voice breaking on the "to" and utterly gone before the last word of his statement. "If we don't—" he said, not doing much better at getting the life back in his words, which were reedy, rattling shadows of sentences. "If we don't try, don't keep you strong… you're just going to die faster, Aidan. Please."

Aidan was running at him and Josh didn't know why for a moment. Then he realized he'd sat down on the ground very suddenly, very hard. He'd been aiming for the bed, maybe, in some parallel universe, but had missed. Aidan was with him in a heartbeat, hand on his shoulder, facing his profile while Josh stared at the ground and tried not to implode.

"Okay," Aidan said, his voice calm and soothing now, the tone he used on Rebecca in the beginning when he needed to talk her down from ripping someone's face off. "Okay. I hear you, alright?" When Josh merely gave a twitch of a nod, it was Aidan's turn to turn his jaw so Josh was facing him. Josh stared at his face, unblinking, trying to descramble the visual input and redesign it into an image he understood. "I know you're just trying to help. And… you argue a pretty good case, I can't lie. I got it. I know what you're getting at and—" Aidan took in a breath, slower than Josh had, and held it for a while as if bracing himself for the high-dive. "... And I'll try it. Okay? So, just… calm down. We're going to try everything we can, just like you say."

"I'm not—" Josh said, not even sure what he was trying to say. His brain-to-mouth filter was long gone and what was coming out instead was a string of pure, unedited feeling. "I'm not trying to, I don't mean to guilt you, have a freak out panic attack session and get you to agree to this because you feel—" he let out a shrill, short laugh, then clamped down on it, not wanting to wake Sally. He tried again, striving for less insane. "Because you feel bad for me. Because this isn't about me. My condition won't kill me. We have a—a limited window of time and you are the focus, Aidan. It's you."

As he said it he looked back at him again, finally, able to brave the fiery spike pit death trap that was eye contact, something so terrifying to him when he was feeling this unhinged. Aidan was looking right back at him, dark eyes holding some kind of mix of sadness, worry and… something Josh couldn't pin down. He just recognized the reflection of the feeling because it was exactly where he was right now too.

"I know," Aidan said, still gentle, but no longer his "talking to crazy people" gentle. He settled down on the floor beside Josh, their sides touching as they numbly faced forward, and then, and only then, did the steel bar around Josh's middle release him a notch or two. He was able to take in a full breath for the first time in many long minutes and let his eyes slip shut, savoring it. If he'd thought firing off a full round into a werewolf to spring his battered vampire roomie out of a S&M torture prison had been exhausting, it was nothing compared to the emotional fallout that happened after.

"Just… one request, Josh," Aidan said, sounding as wretched and wrecked as Josh was. Josh rolled his head over to look at him, too tired to even lift it off the side of the bed where they were leaning.

Aidan's eyes were half-lidded and resigned, but not in a necessarily bad way. "I'm not feeding from you tonight. We need to sleep. And if your blood _does _poison me I'd rather do it tomorrow morning. Give the rest of this," he gestured to his bandaged, pummeled face, "time to heal a bit."

Josh could have made the argument that blood would help Aidan heal those injuries much faster, but the little cringe Aidan made when he adjusted the bandage over his swollen-shut eye made him reconsider. It also lit a brief, violent fire in his stomach that threatened to consume him if he so much as twitched, and Josh shook his head violently to beat it back down. Once Aidan was better they could focus on Liam, and revenge. And oh, would Josh ever focus then. For now he breathed in a few times through his nose, and apparently he looked like he was trying to stave off another episode, because Aidan sighed, said, "Case in point," and gently pulled the pair of them up to their feet. "You gonna be okay?"

"Dandy," Josh said, giving Aidan a thumbs up. "But yeah, your condition is reasonable. Probably a good idea. So. Yeah, sleep." Just because he was there, and Josh was there, and they were going to be getting pretty deep over the next few weeks, Josh pulled Aidan into a sudden, hard hug, something not meant to be warm and comforting, but life-affirming and jarring. There were no manly back-pats to take the emotional edge off the gesture. Josh buried his face in Aidan's shoulder and squeezed him for a good half a minute, not even paying attention to what Aidan was doing in return. When he finally disengaged he wasn't sure he'd make it upstairs before falling asleep mid-ascent. "Goodnight."

Josh turned and zombied his way to the stairwell, and it was only when he was more than halfway up that he barely caught the reply. "Goodnight, Josh."


	2. The rush

"Josh…" Sally said softly, leaning against the fridge with her arms clasped around her middle, frowning at the stove. "Far be it from me to judge your cooking, but I don't think eggs should be that color."

"Fuck," Josh said, snapping out of his standing-up nap and killing the heat on the front burner. Sure enough, the edges of the sunny-side eggs were looking farther into the dark end of the color spectrum than was strictly desired, and he sighed and moved them over to a cool burner while he prodded them with a spatula, trying to salvage the dish. He glanced up at Sally, who looked like she'd gotten about as much sleep as he had. "You'll still eat these, right? Since you're always hungry now?"

It was mostly a joke, but he hadn't expected the wan, slightly sick look that crossed over her face. She gave him a tight-lipped smile and tossed up a shrug. "What can I say? Even I don't find that appetizing."

"Burn," Josh muttered, giving her a small smirk as he moved over to toss the eggs.

"Yeah, my point exactly," Sally quipped back, but a moment later a jaw-cracking yawn stole over her and she buried her face in both hands to suppress it. Josh turned to face her better, putting the pan back on the stove and groping out on the countertop for the butter to re-grease it for take two at breakfast.

"You alright?" he asked, not taking his eyes off her.

Sally lifted an eyebrow at him, the expression exasperated but unspeakably fond. "You idiot. You're asking me that, after the night you and Aidan had?"

Josh didn't respond, just lowering his chin more to give her a very serious stare. It was one he always thought he'd use on his future kids—the "don't try to change the subject, missy" look. Sally squirmed under it and gave him a half-hearted shrug.

"Just… reeling, you know? Same as you. Aidan still sleeping?"

"Oh, I think he'll be sleeping until at least tonight," Josh said, peering at his right arm to look at his watch. Only a watch-tan greeted him and he frowned before remembering he'd moved the watch to his left, since his right was still feeling a little tender from the wolf scratches.

"Or," Aidan said from the entryway to the kitchen, causing Josh to jump, "Aidan was roused by the irresistible aroma of burning protein." He nodded to Sally. "Morning, sunshine."

Josh rolled his eyes at Aidan, but was pleased to see the bandage over his swollen eye was gone, and the bruising and misshapen flesh that had squeezed it all but shut last night had gone down enough that Aidan merely looked like he was giving them a perpetual evil eye.

"I was trying to perfect my vertical napping technique. Unfortunately I haven't mastered the finer points of multitasking, yet."

"Nora back yet?" Aidan asked, the subject change giving Josh whiplash.

A curl of familiar dread settled low in his gut at the thought of his fiance, who would indeed be home from her own night of shifting any moment now. "Not… yet," he said, clearing his throat and trying to be inconspicuous.

Of course this only meant he was riotously conspicuous to both Aidan and Sally, who turned to face him at once in an eerily synchronized manner. Josh glanced at them uncomfortably from the corner of his eye while he melted the new slab of butter in the pan. "She doesn't know?" Sally asked, at the same time Aidan said, "You told her, right?"

"I—" Josh began, giving up on cooking and killing the heat under the butter before turning to face his supernatural roommates. "If I'd told her what I was _really _doing last night, don't you think she'd be here by now?" He shook his head. "No way. I didn't need her to know about Liam's last night and—and it's not like she could have even come with me, anyway. Not when she was shifting herself."

Aidan frowned. "But—I thought you said, on the ride back, you knew where to find me because Nora told you."

"Yeah, she did," Josh said, running his good hand across his considerable stubble, fighting down the new bubble of panic that was edging its way up his throat. "I called and asked her where Liam changes… of course, she thought that was suspicious, but I told her it was just so we could avoid the area. I sort of said I was out for a walk and thought I saw him, so I was just… double-checking."

"And she _bought _that?" Sally asked, aghast. "But… you're terrible at lying."

"And until last night, Josh was also human," Aidan said, his voice flat and dull. He pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat down in it, rubbing his temple. "Nora probably figured he'd have no reason to be crazy enough to take on a wolf on the night of the change."

"Oh my God, _Josh,_" Sally said, his name coming out in a whine that was a mix of exasperation and deep pity. "You're so dead. You didn't even call or text her to say what happened last night when you got back?"

"Why bother?" Josh asked, tossing up a helpless shrug. "Shifting is bad enough as it is without waking up the next morning to a voicemail or a text about—about this. And freaking her out won't make either of us any less infected. The news is still the same whether I tell her now or later."

The door opened just then, and all three roommates froze and whipped their heads towards the sound. A rush of city noise and wind was audible for just a moment before the door shut again, muffling all but the loudest sirens and honking. Nora appeared in the doorway, windswept and dishevelled, looking exhausted and—Josh's heart sank through his sneakers into the floor—extremely wary.

"What news are we talking about?" Nora asked, and Josh could have kicked himself. Of course, he thought bitterly. Pre-and-post-shift hearing was as good as it got for their kind, so it was laughable to think a flimsy wooden structure would muffle their conversation to her keen ears.

"Ah-hem," Aidan said, standing up painfully slowly and jerking his head toward Sally. Sally pushed herself upright from the fridge, wringing her fingers to the point that it looked painful, and both tried to make a hasty retreat from the kitchen to give the two wolves time to talk.

"Aidan—what the—" Nora said, reaching out and stopping him, turning his shoulder so she could better see his savaged, bruised face. In spite of everything that had happened between them, it was plain to see Nora was shaken, worried by the damage he'd taken. She looked between him and Josh, going slowly pale.

"Nora—um, why don't we—I need to talk to you," Josh said, putting his hands out in as non-threatening a way as he could manage, recognizing the hard-edged, wild look that was slowly coming over his fiance's face. So soon after her shift her wolf was still brimming near the surface, so much more a part of her than his ever was, and he knew they were dealing with a powder keg now.

Unfortunately Nora's eyes latched onto the bandages wrapped around Josh's right arm, the blood slowly leaking through to stain them slightly pink. Nora released Aidan's shoulder, taking half a step back, and Josh knew she had jumped to the worst—and the right—conclusion at once.

"That's where you—_Josh_," Nora said, her voice giving out entirely on his name. Josh's heart twisted painfully in his chest as she turned to look at him, a thousand kinds of despair battling for dominance in her eyes. "_No_."

"Nora—" Josh said, wanting to bring her in close and hold her, but she put her hand up to stop him.

"It was because of you. Wasn't it?" she said, turning her eyes to Aidan, their blue crackling over into the color of a chemical flame. "_Wasn't it?!"_

"Nora, please—" Josh said, skirting around the table to try to put himself between his fiance and his best friend. Nora was too quick, though, and Aidan, who was offering no words in his own defence, was condemned by his silence.

"_You fucker!_" Nora screamed, shoving Aidan hard with both hands. The combination of her post-shift, lingering power and Aidan's own compromised state made it an almost laughable mis-match of strength. Aidan careened backwards, sliding clear across the entire length of the kitchen table, taking salt shakers, napkin dispensers, and a half-empty coffee mug with him as he crashed down to the floor on the other side. Sally shrieked and leapt back from the shattering ceramic, but Nora was already after him, diving over the table, hands out to grab at the front of Aidan's shirt.

Josh tackled her. For all his trouble he got his knee slammed into the corner of the table and an armful of flailing, frantic Nora. He clasped his arms around her, trying to restrain her, while Aidan remained exactly where he was, on his back, propped up by his elbows in the debris of their kitchen. He looked up at them, his face settled into the look Josh hated most—the "I deserve this, it's all my fault" face that meant he was not going to fight back in his own defense any time soon.

"Nora! Please, just _listen_—" Josh begged, realizing belatedly that his fiancé was growling and snarling in his arms, still desperate to tear into Aidan. Josh's mind went into overdrive, struggling to call up the words he needed to explain to her and get her to calm down. The only thing that jumped to his mind, and out of his mouth, was, "He's _dying_, Nora!"

"_Good_," she snarled with such savage, unrepentant venom that Josh's arms faltered around her and she was able to throw him off. Stunned, Josh took half a step back and tensed to intervene if she was going to make another move for Aidan, but she seemed done with round one of her assault. Josh swallowed hard, his throat impossibly dry, and God bless Sally, because he could not find his words.

"Nora," Sally said gently, cautiously approaching the bereft woman and reaching a hand out the way one would to a wounded, cornered animal. "You don't—mean that."

"Like _hell_ I don't," Nora snapped, and though Sally jerked her arm back, nervous, Nora only had eyes for Aidan. "After everything he's done for you, this is what he gets? After how—how _hard_ he tried to be free of the wolf, it's always—it's always _you_, Aidan. Every heartbreak and misery always leads back to you."

"Nora," Josh said again, wishing fervently he could do more than just repeat her name over and over like an invocation. "You don't... you don't understand. Let me—"

"Explain?" Nora asked, turning to Josh now. "The truth, you mean?" Her throat bobbed around what sounded like a cut-off sob. "Josh... Why would you—what, what in the _world_ would possess you to—" She reached out suddenly to grasp at the table and Josh's heart leapt into his throat as what color had remained seemed to drain from her face, leaving her a deathly gray. He moved forward to steady her but she put her hand up again to stave him off. "I should have known," she said in a broken whisper.

"No," Josh said, clenching and unclenching his hands, wanting nothing more than to go to her and being denied it. "Please. Liam had him in his… his dungeon where he shifts..." she seemed to be letting him talk, and Josh capitalized on the opportunity. "We got out, but he—" Josh shook his head, trying to get the most pertinent information out first. "Nora, Aidan took the blame for Brynn. He told Liam that he did it. Liam—he won't suspect you anymore." _And you said you were glad Aidan was dying_, a despairing, wounded part of him wanted to add, but he knew Nora was hurting and would never have said anything that cruel if she had known.

Nora's face was a blank mask, still largely colorless. Sally had moved over to crouch at Aidan's side sometime during the talk, though her eyes were still trained on Josh and Nora while she gnawed her lip nervously. Aidan was staring expressionlessly at the table leg, eyes seeing through it to some unknown place.

"Liam, is he dead?" Nora asked hopefully, eyes raking over Josh's wound again, a hard desperation in her eyes and the baring of her teeth that always looked almost like a smile to Josh.

"He… no," Josh said, burying his face in his hands and focusing on breathing. "I shot him, a bunch of times, but he was already mid-shift by then and… I'm sure he's lying low right now. Recovering. We don't have to worry about him coming for us… just yet."

"This is so…" Nora said, lifting one hand to press it, shaking, above her eyes. "Josh. How could you go there? You could have been _killed._"

Josh opened his mouth to say something—a weak stab at a joke, maybe a fond reassurance that he was indestructible—but he knew nothing would help right now. He cleared his throat and tried to get closer to her, feeling out the waters before he did anything drastic. "You're… you're probably freezing, and hungry, and tired. Why don't you—why don't you head upstairs, I'll meet you there with some breakfast. Okay?"

Nora let out a choked sob and finally looked at him in the face, eyes glassy with tears that he knew she would never let fall. She was visibly trembling, and Josh could tell it was teetering between devastation and fury. "I—I need to," she said, gesturing ineffectually before pulling her coat around her with a twitchy jerk of her pale hands. "I need—some air. I'll be back," she said, hissing in a breath through her teeth and hunching down over herself, heading straight for the door. Josh reached out after her, but her name died in his throat. A second later the door closed and the three of them were left in the wake of her departure, the silence deafening.

"She didn't—" Josh said, walking jerkily over to the chair where Nora had dropped her overnight bag after she came in. "She doesn't have her wallet, or her phone…"

Sally got up noiselessly from the ground and drifted over to Josh, ghostlike. "I'll go bring them to her," she said, her voice a little hoarse. She cleared her throat and gave Josh a timid smile before rummaging in the bag and pulling out Nora's credentials. She stuffed them in the pockets of her hoodie and went to the pegs on the wall where their jackets hung, pulling her magenta windbreaker down and slipping into it.

Josh felt like he was recovering from an explosion. His ears were ringing and even the smallest of reactions seemed delayed. He barely managed to make it over to Sally before she left, grabbing onto her free hand while the other was clasped around the door handle. He gave it a squeeze. "Thank you," he said softly, and she squeezed it back and gave him a look of indescribable affection. Then she slipped out into the brisk morning air and was gone.

* * *

Aidan remained where he was, dimly aware of Josh and Sally talking in the living room. The door opened and shut and the slightest dip in temperature registered to his skin before the room regulated once more. Absently, Aidan picked a shard of ceramic out of his palm, where it had slightly dented but not broken through the skin. He rolled it between his thumb and forefinger before tossing it aside, and then Josh was in front of him.

"Aidan," Josh said, blinking rapidly the way he did when he was unspeakably ashamed. "Are you alright?"

Aidan huffed out a humorless laugh through his nose. "I'm fine, Josh. Your fiance is tough, and I'm diseased, but I _am _still a vampire."

"I'm so sorry," Josh said, standing up and extending a hand to help Aidan up. Aidan didn't need it, but knew it was the gesture that counted. Taking his friend's outstretched hand, he got to his feet and brushed some wood shards from his shirt. "I should have—God, you and Sally were right, I should have called her this morning. I could have headed this off at the pass."

"No," Aidan said, unspeakably tired. "You couldn't have, Josh. Nora is furious, and she has every right to be. You were re-infected saving me. There's no getting around that."

Josh let out a frustrated, suddenly fervent breath of air and threw his hands up. "Will you just—you goaded on a rage-hopped, ready-to-shift werewolf so Nora and I would be off the hook. He was going to kill you. You took the rap for _murder. _In no twisted version of reality is me getting scratched your fault. It just—it just happened, okay? She's got to understand that eventually."

Aidan shook his head, but managed to stop himself before he further incensed Josh by sticking to the version of reality that he knew to be true. "I understand what you mean, Josh," he said simply. "But you've got to remember… you're her mate. You come first, always. I never expected anything different from her. She loves you."

Josh grimaced at the words, though Aidan could not for the life of him understand why. He knew it was a terrible position to be in, his best friend and his mate being so constantly at odds, but it seemed a little deeper than that. "I can't believe she'd still feel that way about you now," Josh said simply. "Once it sinks in, what you've done for her… she'll calm down."

"Okay," Aidan said, unable to say anything else. Josh gave him a look that said _what? _but Aidan just shook his head again. "Just, 'okay.' I'll take your word for it."

Josh let out a slow sigh, closed his eyes for a moment, and like clockwork, the compulsive cleaning began. Aidan moved out of the way so Josh could get to the broom and dustpan, leaning against the fridge to watch his friend go through the familiar motions of picking up after a supernatural fit.

The cough took him completely by surprise. All night he'd practiced carefully working his throat so the worst of the itch would be contained, and he'd thought he had it down to a pretty particular science. Instead it burst out of him in an explosive, wet bark and some sort of dark fluid that wasn't quite blood spattered out abruptly against the floor and part of a chair. Aidan clapped his hand to his face and backed up, eyes watering, and he snorted painfully through his nose to try to swallow back the rest of the stuff before he was bathing in it.

Josh was at his side in an instant. "Shit, Aidan—sit, I'll get you a—" Whatever Josh was going to get him was not revealed as the wolf bustled off to the other side of the kitchen while Aidan did as he was told and took a seat on the blood-spattered chair. How delightful.

Josh returned with a wet towel, which Aidan took and pressed to his face, using part of the rest of it to wipe his hand down. Josh was staring at his face with an unparalleled intensity, like he was waiting on tenterhooks for Aidan to deliver some sort of life-changing prophecy. Instead Aidan sniffed heavily, cleared his throat, and said, "Well, that sucks."

He'd hoped for a laugh, but Josh was still looking at him like Aidan was a kicked shelter puppy. Aidan rolled his eyes, mopped his face one more time with the defiled towel, and set it on the table. "It's gonna happen from now on, man," Aidan said, giving him a shrug. "Don't know what to tell you."

Josh let out a sigh and shook his head. "Sorry. I don't mean to make you feel—"

"Like an invalid?"

"Yeah." Josh quirked a sad smile at him, then abruptly pulled up the arm of his long-sleeved flannel sleep shirt. "So, breakfast?" he offered, sticking his arm out to Aidan with no preamble. Aidan made a face, not of disgust—because Josh still smelled like quite possibly the best thing on the planet—but awkward discomfort.

"I don't know," Aidan said, clearing his throat and running his tongue over his teeth. They were still the blunted form of his human canines, but if Josh didn't move his arm soon that would be a thing of the past. "Do you really think it's a great idea for me to snack on you with Nora already wanting my head on a pike?"

"Nora—" Josh said, the name coming out on a sigh. "She'll just have to deal with it. This is an arrangement you and I have, and honestly? At this point, nothing's gonna make her any less upset."

"So you're just going for the gold then?" Aidan asked, trying to distract Josh, perhaps long enough for the girls to come home. His throat was aching and Josh still hadn't moved his goddamn arm.

"That's what husbands are supposed to do, right? Get their bachelor's, master's and PhD in pissing off their wives?" Josh asked. He offered him a smile, but after a moment it was back to business. "Come on, man. It's gonna get cold," he joked.

"Josh—" Aidan began, but Josh shook his head and lifted his hand.

"No. You are absolutely not backing out on me. Don't make me have another panic attack on you. Since apparently that works when I want my way."

"Not cool," Aidan groaned. "Look, if we're going to… do this, can we at least not do it _here_? I'd kind of rather not have Nora and Sally walk in on this. It would be a shame to get staked in the kitchen you're trying to clean up."

Josh seemed to give that some thought, then nodded. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea. So uh… your… room?" he asked, putting his hands up in a lost gesture while fighting back a chuckle.

"I'd say you should buy me dinner first, but…" Aidan said, gesturing at Josh's arm. That finally got Josh to laugh and some of the tension broke between them. Aidan got gingerly to his feet and lead the way down to the basement, hoping he'd do a better job hearing approaching household members if any decided to come down the stairs this time.

"So, I figure, I'll wait for Nora to get home, talk to her a bit, get her set up and put to bed and then I'll head down to the hospital," Josh was saying, talking a little too fast and narrating entirely too much for Aidan's needs. "I'll get a general mockup of the usual stuff—and if I think there's any suspicion about the missing drugs—well, maybe you could compel some of them? Or are you still off that? If you are, no big, I'll work something else out—"

"Josh," Aidan said, turning to face him and reaching out. Josh jumped, but Aidan was just going to close the door behind him. He gave him a half-amused, half-pained look. "You're rambling something mighty. If you don't want to go through with this—"

"No!" Josh insisted, then clapped his hands and rubbed them together very fast. "No, absolutely, this is happening. I'm just…"

"Nervous?" Aidan tried. "I won't drain you, I promise. I've been on… like, a Soviet prison diet since I was dug up, and I'm not even close to starving anymore since I've been able to selectively feed from Kenny a few times."

"I know," Josh assured him. "I just, can't help but remember what happened the last time you tried to feed from me. Hoping… we won't have a repeat of that."

"Hah," Aidan said, moving over to sit on the edge of the bed. He wished he had a few chairs down here or something. "You and me both."

For an uncomfortable moment Josh just stood at the door, but then he seemed to realize he should move. "Oh," he said quietly, starting over uncertainly until he was standing in front of Aidan. He moved to his left, then his right, then scratched the back of his neck. "Do you… want me standing? Or should I…?"

"Whatever's comfortable," Aidan said, putting his hands out, palms up. "Though you might want to sit, just in case you get… I don't know, woozy."

"Woozy?" Josh asked, lifting his eyebrows. "Like a swooning damsel?"

"Hey, it's like donating blood. Tougher guys than you've gone pale and passed out on my watch before."

Josh rolled his eyes at that but took a seat on Aidan's right side so he would have access to his unwounded left arm. Josh twisted his arm up and at an odd angle so the underside would be available to Aidan, but Aidan shook his head.

"That's going to be wickedly uncomfortable. Just—" He looked at him for permission, got a small nod, and lifted Josh's arm up so he was leaning his chin over his upper arm, gaining access to the top of Josh's forearm. He had to stoop his head a little to reach, but this way Josh wasn't contorting himself. "Good?"

"Yup!" Josh said, a little too gung-ho and strained for the situation. "Don't mind me, I'm just being my usual, incredibly awkward self. Have at." Josh was determinedly looking away from Aidan, the way someone would before getting a booster shot, and Aidan rolled his eyes affectionately before taking an experimental sniff of the expanse of flesh before him.

And, _oh. _Wow. Aidan felt the almost ticklish sensation of his eyes dilating, then going their step beyond that into the black voids of feeding mode. His fangs sprang free and every inch of his skin began to tingle. Josh definitely did not smell like dog right now. He smelled the way he had tasted at first, the "too good" buzz of energetic, different blood that was flowing rapidly through his veins. _We're trying this out first, _Aidan had to remind himself, breathing hard through his mouth and watching the little hairs on Josh's forearm ghost back and forth with his panting. Josh had goosebumps absolutely everywhere. _Just a sip for now, just in case._

Aidan leaned forward and gently, painstakingly broke skin with just the tips of his fangs, eliciting a slight, sharp inhale from Josh but nothing more. Blood welled at the surface of the wounds and without thinking how it would feel to his friend, Aidan languishly lapped them up with his tongue. Josh hissed a little at the sensation but remained perfectly still, the model patient.

Aidan wanted to cry, or sing, or something else completely over-the-top and melodramatic. This was _blood, _warm, living, moving blood, not stolen and hastily sipped in lukewarm shots out of hospital vials in the men's room or sucked out of a cold IV bag. This wasn't drinking recklessly, taking his life in his hands and pushing Sally to straddle him with a stake, yelling at him to stop risking his life with possibly tainted specimen. He had nothing to lose, and this blood—he wasn't sure if it was the fifteen months underground, the yawning, aching hunger he had felt trying to find clean sources in the months after that, the sheer relief of not having to give a fuck anymore, or some combination of it all, but Aidan could scarcely recall anything ever tasting so good in his life.

"So…" Josh said, snapping him out of his spell. Aidan had no idea how long it had been, and he blinked rapidly, turning dazed eyes over to look at his friend. Josh was looking a little flushed, his throat bobbing nervously as he glanced in his direction. "No, um… pukey...ness?"

Aidan tried to remember how speech worked. He cleared his throat, ran his tongue over his teeth, and said, "Nope. Not yet. Maybe…" He swallowed hard and wondered if his stomach could still growl. "Maybe we'll give it another minute or so. Takes… a little while for it to kick in, if it's gonna hurt."

"Right," Josh said, nodding and clenching and unclenching his fist. That caused new spots of blood to well up and, without meaning to, Aidan leaned forward to lap them up. Josh stared at the side of his face. "Or, you could lick me again. You having, um… control issues, there?"

"Hmm," Aidan said, a noncommittal noise designed to get Josh to be quiet. It was so, so unbelievably good. Like licking an electrical socket without the pain. It burned a little as it went down, like a smooth shot of smoky brandy. Aidan dimly hoped that wasn't the were toxins wreaking havoc on his esophagus, but honestly? At this point he was willing to go through the foaming and vomiting just to get more of this amazing flavor.

Aidan managed to resist for what felt like hours, but Josh was glancing at the watch he'd taken off and was holding in his right hand. Aidan trusted him to keep time. Aidan stared hungrily at the little beads of dark red—Josh must be slightly dehydrated to get that color—and felt on the verge of expiring when Josh finally said, "Well, it's been about a minute, how do you—"

That was all the cue Aidan needed. In an instant he snarled low in his throat and sank his teeth back in, perfectly matching the marks he'd made earlier, and Josh yelped a little in shock, but then went perfectly still again. Aidan's eyes rolled back in his head as he clutched Josh's arm with both hands, struggling not to tear into him or make the wounds any messier.

It was sheer bliss, pure ecstasy. This was the kind of high-out-of-his-mind bender he would normally only achieve after draining at least a few victims completely dry. Maybe it was because he'd been virtually anorexic for months now, but he was starting to suspect it was just Josh. Had other vampires discovered the blinding, unbridled crack that was a pre-shift, brand new were? Probably not. Well, none of them were getting their fangs into Josh, Josh was _his. _Aidan pulled back and gave a slow, lascivious lick to Josh's arm, smearing the blood farther up towards his wrist, and Josh shuddered from head to toe.

"Whoooa kay," Josh breathed, not really a request for him to stop. It more sounded like he just needed to verbalize something, anything. "Alrighty. Okay."

Aidan groaned in response and drank him down, only just able to recognize the little flag that popped up in his mind when he instinctively knew it was time to stop feeding from a victim. It was hard, impossibly hard, to pull himself back, and he was peripherally shocked he had even retained the muscle memory needed to understand he had taken the proper amount for most blood donations—one pint, almost exactly. It felt woefully inadequate, and yet it was the most food Aidan had had in months.

Josh tried to tug his arm back, but Aidan was still holding onto it. Instead of freaking out, Josh just waited patiently until Aidan clued in and managed to pry himself loose. Josh stood up, but then Aidan's nurse instincts kicked in and he gently tugged him back down.

"Mm-mm," he said, shaking his head and licking his lips. "No walking for at least five minutes after you donate blood. Just sit."

"Kay," Josh said, tapping his right hand nervously on his jeans. He cleared his throat and addressed Aidan's wall. "So, you feel…?"

"Fucking fantastic," Aidan said, leaning back and flopping out over the bed, spread-eagle. "You're pretty tasty."

"Pleasant change from before!" Josh said, in a strained, overly chipper voice. "Better than puke. No one likes puke."

Aidan managed to emerge slightly from his blood haze and looked up at Josh, propping himself up on one arm to look at the back of his head. "You… you alright?" Aidan shook his head, trying to get his fangs to dial back and his eyes to go back to normal. He knew it was hard to talk to him when he was like this. "I didn't…" a frown came to his face and his stomach plummeted. "Did I hurt you?"

"Psssht," Josh said, waving his arm at him. "You were gentle, I'll cherish the memory of our first—uh, second, time always," Josh joked, turning to look at him over his shoulder. "It was just sort of… really intense. I'd forgotten."

"Sorry about that," Aidan said, feeling a bit abashed now. "I won't be as… um. Snarly and vampire-like next time. I think I was just hungry."

"Totally understandable," Josh said, but there was something else bugging him. Aidan frowned at him, finally feeling his facial features going back to normal, and he pushed himself back upright so he could look at Josh's profile better.

"... You sure there's nothing else?" Aidan asked, kicking up the burner under his simmering pot of worry.

"Yup," Josh said, actually going the extra mile to give Aidan a real smile and more than a few seconds of faltering eye contact. "Just sorta… nervous about talking to Nora."

Aidan nodded. "Yeah… I don't blame you. If you need me to…" he frowned, then shook his head. "No, I think the best thing I could do for this situation is to stay as far away as possible, huh?"

"I think that's a safe assumption," Josh agreed, giving him a wry smile. "Well…" he checked his watch. "It's been close enough to five minutes and I need a shower. I'll drop by when I'm done at the hospital and done talking to Nora. Okay?"

Aidan gave him a half-smile that bordered on slightly sad, but nodded. If it made Josh feel better to give him a sampling of various vaccines, it was the least he could do. After all, he'd just given him quite possibly the best meal of his life. "You know where to find me," he said, and shifted over to take up the whole bed as Josh took his leave.


	3. The girls

"Nora!" Sally called, shoving her hands in her pockets and running quickly down the stairs, staring at her feet as she did so. Ever since her death she'd been leery of stairs and each step was taken with a carefully-measured, calculated placement of her feet. Once her feet hit pavement she jogged down the sidewalk, barely spotting the blonde figure in the hunter green jacket who had paused at the end of the block, not looking back at her. Nora must have heard her, though she made no motion to acknowledge that she had.

Sally shivered violently and hunched her shoulders against the brisk Boston air. Once she'd been a proud Massachusite, able to run around in nothing but a short dress and boots in the fall, but if there was one thing being dead for a few years ill-prepared her for, it was the delights of temperature. Sally jogged to catch up with Nora and slowed to a walk only when she was within a few feet of the other woman.

"You… are fast," Sally said, giving Nora's arm the most awkward of bro-fists. She let out a sound that was like a laugh if a laugh was slowly dying. Then she cleared her throat and looked straight forward, the way Nora was doing, and dug around in the pockets of the hoodie under her jacket.

"I got your stuff," she said, holding out Nora's phone and wallet to the taller woman. Nora turned to look at her, finally, her eyes red-rimmed and exhausted, and she reached out to take the items.

"Thanks," Nora said hoarsely, averting her eyes and sniffing once, hard. For a moment Sally was stunned that she was, generally, keeping it together in public. Then the facade crumpled and Nora buried her face in her hands, which were still clutching her things, and heaved in a shuddering breath.

"Oh," Sally said, sympathy twisting in her gut as she looked left and right to see if they were attracting any onlookers. Then she took Nora gently by the shoulders and lead her away from the crosswalk, down an access alley between two taller apartment buildings.

Nora refused to bring her face out of her hands even when Sally leaned her against the bricks and rubbed her shoulders in what she hoped was a comforting way. Bridget had been an anomaly in Sally's life—she always got along with and understood guys so much better than fellow females. What was soothing to one was offensive or weird to another and Sally had found herself frequently in one of two categories with other women—either instantaneous best friends for life or awkwardly dissonant.

Nora was different. Not only was she a fellow supe, but she was Josh's girl, Sally's own devoted friend who, to hear Josh tell it, had been positively moony-eyed and doting over her rotting, wrapped-up corpse during the spell that had brought her back from the dead even while Josh reported feeling mildly ill over the whole thing. Nora was beyond her home girl, but lately Sally had felt like she was back to square one with her, making brash jokes and keeping it light because the other woman was so hard to predict these days. Every day something new set her off—not without perfectly good reason, of course—but it was hard to know what to do with someone so angry and violent and their once solid friendship had suffered for it.

"Hey now," Sally said, giving her arms a soft squeeze since, so far, her physical contact hadn't been rejected, "at least Josh is alive. It's the little blessings that are gonna keep you sane."

Nora shook her head, but Sally didnt get the impression it was out of any sort of disagreement. Tentatively, Sally reached out to take the phone and wallet, and when Nora let her Sally slipped them back in her pockets. "Right back where those came from," Sally said with a soft chuckle, and then Nora was leaning miserably into her in a very slow-motion hug. The other woman's hands were still over her face so Sally got on tip toes and hugged her the best she could while pretending to be the taller of the two.

"It's okay," Sally said soothingly, smoothing Nora's messy, tangled blonde hair down her back. "I know it's _not_ okay, but at the same time, it is. We're still alive—in a manner of speaking—" No chuckle from Nora, though Sally hadn't been expecting one. "... And we're all still together. Okay?"

Nora finally released her own face and wrapped her arms back around Sally with startling werewolf strength. Sally made a small sound as the air was forced from her lungs but Nora took the cue and loosened up a little. She was trembling just as badly as she'd been back at the house, and Sally made nonsensical hushing sounds as Nora cried it out, deep, gut-wrenching sounds against her shoulder. Sally's calves were starting to hurt from teetering up on her toes to be Nora's upright "big spoon," but after years of having little to no impact on the physical plane, Sally would rather die (all over again) than cut these precious moments where she could _do_ something for one of them short.

Nora's body-wracking sobs downgraded to soft, despairing keening sounds, then to hiccups, and finally to heavy, jerking breaths. Sally knew she had enough fodder to cry for years, and highly suspected some of those tears had been for Erin. Hell, maybe even some were for Aidan.

As if she'd read her mind, Nora's stuffy voice asked, "Aidan... Josh said he's dying. Why?"

Sally knew this was delicate ground, and proceeded with caution. "Apparently what happened was Aidan got... injected with a syringe, full of that flu blood. I don't really know any details other than that." Sally fervently hoped Nora wouldn't make any more snappish comments about him. They were both her friends but Sally wouldn't be able to sit by and listen for round two of "I'm gonna do the Electric Slide on Aidan's grave."

Again Nora seemed to read her mind, which was getting really spooky. "And he really... told Liam that he killed—" She pulled back from the hug long enough to raise her eyebrows at Sally, not needing to finish her thought aloud. Sally just nodded and Nora closed her eyes and let out a sigh.

"I don't know what to do with this."

Sally wasn't 100% sure what she meant, but chalked it up to a general statement about everything that had happened recently. "Yeah," she said simply, knowing sometimes well-thought out replies weren't as appreciated as simple companionship.

"It's just—" Nora tilted her head back and squeezed her eyes shut. "Josh has tried _so hard_ and sacrificed so much... and I know it hasn't just been for Aidan. It's been for me, too. Just the idea that he's cursed again, and he wound up this way saving someone who clearly has a death wish anyway?"

This was new. Sally hadn't realized Nora paid enough attention to Aidan these days to pick up on the fact that he was portraying some deeply worrisome habits. While she was mulling this over Nora went on.

"Josh told me he would always pick me, if he had to, when it came down to me or Aidan."

She didnt have to go on; the implication was clear. Nora was doubting that was true. Sally cleared her throat and stepped out on the thin conversational ice. "He still would do anything for you, you know. I mean, I love you and I love Aidan, and if you made me choose I'd be really fucking stressed because the answer is I can't. I'd help whichever one if you needed me most at the time, then run straight to the other right after to check that you were okay."

Nora let out what was quite possibly the saddest laugh Sally had ever heard in her life. "Sally, why can't Josh be like you? Do you know what you just did?"

"Um—hopefully not put my foot in my mouth?"

"You told me the truth. Not what you thought I wanted to hear, not what you thought would hurt me least, but the _truth_." The way she said the word was almost a prayer, soft and reverent.

Sally had no idea what to say to that. Lamely, she reminded her, "Josh loves you. So much."

"And I love him too. More than I know what to do with most days." Nora rubbed her face and left her hands there again, a strange habit Sally only noticed popping up now. "I'm sorry. I know I need to go back there and talk to him. He's scared and hurt and he needs me to be there for him, and ideally to not shove his friends over furniture."

_Yes_! Sally wanted to cheer. _This is the direction we should go in_! Luckily she had enough tact not to do so. Barely enough tact. She swung an arm over Nora's shoulders and gave her a little shake.

"Thatta girl. We can get wasted tonight when this is all done."

"I," Nora said definitively, "will take you up on that." Then she paused and turned her face towards Sally's. For a second Sally froze, totally unaware what was going on, but then she realized Nora had given her a big, long sniff.

"You smell good today. Different." Nora pondered it for a moment, then tilted her head to the side, the motion very wolf-like. "Kind of like... meat?"

Sally did everything in her power to be entertaining and distract Nora from that train of thought on the walk home._ I am definitely going to need that drink tonight._


	4. The results

Josh was still in the shower when he heard Nora open the door to their attached was already clean—he'd been clean ten minutes ago—and now all he was really doing was wasting their hot water. Still, he felt vaguely dirty, like a thin layer of some invisible transgression was still clinging to his skin. He'd paid special attention to both his arms—the wolf arm and the vamp arm, as he was now calling them. Both wounds were clean and healthy, or, as healthy as they could get. Josh couldn't stop staring at the two puncture marks Aidan had left on him. They were tiny, neat, and hardly even stung at all after the initial touch of water. Josh wondered if that was some special side-effect of vampire bites. He'd never thought to ask, but it was probably something he should look into now.

_Right, _Josh thought with a surge of renewed dread, _because this is a thing now, a recurring thing that you have yet to share with your emotionally-compromised fiancé. _Suddenly the bites didn't look so neat and tiny anymore. They were incriminating, impossible to hide, another fight just waiting to happen.

Josh turned the water off just as the door to the bathroom creaked open. He peered around the side of the plastic shower curtain to see Nora standing there, wrapped in a towel, her blonde hair hanging in tangled locks over her pale shoulders. She looked girlish standing there, almost shy.

"Oh, I was going to join you," she said, and Josh leaned down to turn the water back on. Even after all this time heat still rushed to his ears when she did things like this, exactly like he was a nervous school boy wondering how to get to second base without getting slapped. Nora slipped into the shower beside him, dropping her towel as she did, and a moment later they were hugging each other tight under the hot spray of water. It was too hot, but Josh didn't care. He let his eyes slip shut as he rested his face against her dirty hair, fighting back a constricting feeling in his throat.

"I'm so sorry," he muttered to her, and she shushed him.

"That's my line," she whispered, and Josh chuckled around prickling, unshed tears. For a while he was able to forget about everything that had happened and just stand there with her beneath the spray, the hot steam around their bodies gradually starting to cool as the water heater was pushed to its last legs.

"I should let you actually bathe," Josh said, clearing his throat and stepping back. "Before we reach arctic temperatures in here."

"Okay," Nora said, leaning up to kiss him gently. Josh stepped out of the shower and onto the mat outside the tub, grabbing his towel from the rack and ruffling it through his hair. He peered down at his arms again; the wolf scratches were still ugly and stark, but they'd scar up quickly just like his shoulder had all those years ago. The twin puncture marks on his other arm were already starting to scab, thin stretches of translucent, pinkish skin spanning the gaps.

Josh slipped out of the bathroom and got dressed outside, subconsciously going for the shirt Nora liked best on him, which was a short-sleeved button down. It did nothing to hide his cuts, but once she was done with her shower there would be no reason to conceal them. He was going to come clean, anyway.

Nora emerged ten minutes later, looking scrubbed and fresh. It baffled Josh how quickly she was able to get herself clean and ready to go, which Nora had attributed to her speed-showering on her short breaks during her hospital shifts. Josh gave her a crooked smile and she gave him back her vulnerable one that was reserved only for him.

"So," he began, taking a seat on the bed, and Nora followed his lead and joined him, still wrapped in her towel. "There's… a lot of stuff we need to go over."

"Yes," she said simply. "I want to start by saying I'm sorry. I just—reacted, this morning. It wasn't fair to do so without hearing everything first." Nora half-lidded her eyes and looked out towards their window, her gaze distracted and troubled. "I don't know if I can deal with Aidan right now, but I plan to apologize to him later."

"That's a nice gesture," Josh said, "but I don't think it's necessary, if you don't want to. He doesn't blame you for anything."

Nora peered at him, looking baffled in a tired way. "Not even for assaulting him?"

"No," Josh said, shaking his head. "In his words, I'm your mate, and he never expected a different reaction from you."

Nora made a face, and Josh's eyes widened, realizing that might have sounded wrong. Nora put her hand up to stop him. "No, it's okay. I know what he means. He's right." She shook her head and shrugged. "I can't argue with that. I can't keep it together where you're concerned. The idea of you hurt, or in danger…"

Josh moved closer to her, opening his arms as an invitation. She scooted closer and leaned her head against his shoulder, bathing him in the soft scent of her clean skin and cucumber-scented shampoo. "I love you," he said simply.

"Love you, too," she said. "You… seem like you're taking it really well. Your change."

Josh chuckled. "Not really, no. Truth is I haven't even thought about it yet—about changing next month. Too much other stuff to focus on."

"Like Aidan," Nora guessed.

"And you," he affirmed. "I know this is as hard on you as anyone, because I know how I felt when I realized I'd—" he stopped to clear the emotional blockage in his throat, "that I'd turned you. It's almost worse, hearing that something bad has happened to someone you love, than going through it yourself."

"You're a wise man, Joshua Levinson," Nora said with a hint of a smile in her voice.

"There's—in the interest of full disclosure, there's one more thing I need to tell you." He could feel her stiffen in his arms and rushed to put her fears to rest. "It's nothing bad, I promise! Just… an arrangement, that I feel you should know about, so you don't think the worst—"

"Josh, please," Nora said, moving back to look at him with wary eyes. "Just spit it out."

"I'm… I'm going to be feeding Aidan, that is, um, donating blood to the cause, until we figure out how to fix him." Josh wanted to close his eyes in mortification. _Donating blood to the cause? _"It's not enough to hurt me, and it'll only be when he needs it, to keep up his strength—"

Nora cut off his disclaimers, looking more confused than anything. It was a relief; confusion was better than righteous indignation or fury. "Wait—but, you're a were now."

"I know, right? We were worried he'd have that bad reaction again, but… I don't know, he's alright with my blood so far."

"So you already fed him? What, today, or last night?" Nora asked, and Josh realized he was treading on thin ice.

"Today, when you and Sally were out," he said, and he couldn't read Nora's expression. She didn't seem mad, which was a relief, but she didn't seem happy either. "Is that… are you okay?" he asked, amending his statement halfway through.

"I just… you aren't worried at all that his virus can spread to other supes through blood, or saliva, or whatnot?" she asked, furrowing her brow. "There's no precedent for it since vampires don't usually feed on us, so you have no way of knowing."

Josh opened his mouth to put her fears to rest, but paused. That was actually a really good point. "Well… I'm pretty sure this is a vamp-exclusive thing, but I can get some equipment from the hospital to draw blood externally, and Aidan can have it after that. Then there's no contact."

Unbidden, the bright, vivid image of Aidan running his tongue across his forearm leapt to the forefront of Josh's mind. Yeah… no-contact was probably a good idea anyway. That had been all sorts of weird.

"Really, Josh… I just don't think it's a good idea, period. Who knows what your blood might be doing to him without either of you knowing it? Just because he isn't showing outward symptoms just yet doesn't mean it's _good _for him."

"It's better than nothing," Josh argued, starting to feel a little boxed in. Undeniably this was the most productive conversation they'd had in the past few days, but Josh couldn't fight the feeling there was something else she was getting at.

Sure enough: "And what's this about curing him? You're going to be… what, researching this and trying to cook up a vaccine?"

"The plan is to start him on a sampling of antibiotics and vaccines from the hospital," Josh explained, his voice sounding exhausted even to himself. "And to go from there."

Nora was quiet for a moment and Josh felt the very out-of-character desire to push her on the subject, to find out what she was really thinking. Instead he made himself wait, feeling a growing heat somewhere between frustration and embarrassment behind his ears.

"I just… I don't think you're going to find anything," Nora said, quietly.

"So what are you saying?" Josh asked at once, his question coming out much more blunt and stern that he'd meant.

"I'm saying it's not a good idea. I don't think you should do it." Nora maintained perfectly poised eye contact with him the whole time, not backing down an inch. She never did.

"You don't think I should even _try _to look into this?" Josh asked, incredulous. "What's the harm in trying? I'm supposed to just give up, sit back and watch him die and not do anything?"

"What I'm _saying _is I don't think you _can _do anything. This—this isn't going to be _easy, _Josh, going through this with him for the next few… however long it takes, weeks, months? I just… it feels like you're in denial."

"Yeah, okay," Josh said, getting up just to have something to do with the restless energy in his body. "If trying to help someone I care about instead of rolling over and accepting their impending death is denial, then I'm up that Egyptian river without a paddle."

"Josh," Nora said, getting to her feet too and reaching out to have him face her. Her other hand still clutched her towel around her body, and for a moment it was laughable to Josh. They were having this argument while she was still half-naked. "How many vampires have ever been cured of this?"

"We don't know that," he said, striving for patient but instead sounding sarcastic, "because we don't have a convenient database of all known vampires in the world."

"The answer is _none. _Every vampire any of us has encountered since this outbreak has either been dying or desperately trying not to get infected. There is _no evidence _that suggests there is any way of coming back from this." Nora released him and put her hand to her forehead, rubbing the skin there so hard it flushed pink under the pressure. "I just… don't want to see you get hurt."

For a moment Josh was honestly baffled. "Get hurt? I'm not the one who's dying," he reminded her.

"I mean emotionally, Josh," Nora said, sounding mildly annoyed now.

Josh let out a short laugh. "Hate to break it to you, but if Aidan dies, no matter what, I'm going to get hurt. I'll be—" Josh stopped short, the familiar panicky feeling rising in his chest at the words he was saying, like he could somehow make it not true if he didn't verbalize it aloud. Determined to hide that from Nora, he plowed on. "... Losing my best friend. There's nothing anyone can do to change that fact, if that's what happens. The only way it could hurt _more _is if I didn't do absolutely everything in my power to help him before then."

It was a pretty good bit of rhetoric, if Josh said so himself, and it seemed to work on Nora. She deflated a little and sat back down on the edge of their bed. "I understand," she said, her voice resigned and hollow. "Just… try to prepare yourself, Josh. That's all I ask. That, and avoid direct contact with contaminated vampire bodily fluids."

Josh sat down beside her again and shifted to put his arm around her, but something stopped him short. Instead he just remained where he was and nodded once, briefly. He wasn't sure if she saw him do it out of the corner of her eye or not, but she said nothing more and silently got up to get dressed for the rest of the day.

Though they hadn't screamed or thrown things, and had actually kept it civil the entire time they talked, Josh couldn't help but feel adrift. He'd almost have preferred it if they had yelled, a little, gotten it all out and smoothed over. Even though he'd won, technically, it sure didn't feel that way as his fiance leaned down to kiss the side of his cheek, her expression still remote, though she gave him a small smile.

"I'm gonna go out for a bit, just to pick up some things. Sally and I are going to have a girls' night tonight, if that's okay."

"Sure," Josh said, trying to inject his normal, lighthearted tone into the word. Instead he just sounded as worried as he felt. "Be safe… and have fun tonight."

Nora gave him a sad smile, confirming Josh's fears that his concern had leaked into his voice, and turned to leave without another word.

* * *

"You're intact," Aidan said, unable to keep the surprise off his face as Sally closed the basement door behind her. "I'd say you're alive, but I don't really know if either of us qualify as that, strictly speaking."

"I return triumphant," Sally affirmed, sliding down to sit on the floor with her back pressed up against the door. Aidan frowned at that and motioned to his bed, offering her a place to sit. She shook her head. "I'm not staying long, just wanted to check on you."

"Nora's back?" Aidan asked, ignoring her purpose for being here.

"Yeah, she is. She's upstairs with Josh now."

"Well… I guess it's good we haven't heard any furniture breaking." Sally gave him a wan smile at that. "How are _you _doing? You look… appropriately rattled, I guess."

Sally chuckled. "Aidan, you and Josh are beyond ridiculous, you know that? Stop asking me how _I'm _doing. Especially since I asked you first!"

"I'm…" Aidan quirked the corner of his mouth up and shrugged. "I'm good, actually. More than good." He wasn't going to elaborate further but she got up and drew nearer, squinting at him and stooping her head as if peering at an archeological find.

"You _do _look uncharacteristically chipper. What changed in the span of a half hour?" she pondered aloud, but then the answer to that question popped into her head. Her expressive face morphed into a look of abject shock. "You _fed_? _How_? And from _who_?"

"Whom," Aidan corrected, mainly just to see her reaction. She batted at him furiously with her hands.

"I don't care! Tell me!"

"Okay, okay!" Aidan said, laughing and putting up his arms to defend himself, though the odds of Sally actually landing a hit that hurt were slim to none. "It was Josh," he said simply, noncommittally. Then he studied his thumbnail just to complete the nonchalant look.

"... Wait, what?" Sally asked, frowning. "But he's…"

"Yeah, and it apparently doesn't matter." Aidan shrugged. "Maybe it's the infection, or something. Either way his blood is quite satisfying."

Sally gave him a shrewd look and tilted her face to the side, peering at him out of the corner of her eye. "'Quite satisfying?'" she quoted back at him.

"Quite."

"I don't really know what that means…" Sally began slowly, quirking an eyebrow up, "but it sounds hot and I like it."

Aidan laughed and rolled his head back, finishing the gesture up with an eye roll for effect. "Hey, if you see Josh, can you send him down here?" Aidan asked.

"Yeah, sure," Sally responded, rolling her eyes. "Be careful, though. Don't want to give Nora more reason to be jealous."

Aidan frowned at that, certain she'd meant something other than "jealous"—probably "furious" or something along those lines. She took her leave though, and Aidan lifted his shirt hem after she'd gone, examining the cross-hatching of blackened skin that had started across his abdomen earlier last night.

The vine-like marks had been spreading across him so quickly and violently Aidan was sure he'd be dead within the week. Allowing Josh to stick him full of drugs was, largely, for the werewolf's own peace of mind. Aidan didn't expect anything to work, and the least he could do was put his friend's grief and worry to any cause that would help him feel less helpless in all of this. Whatever Liam had shot him full of was potent and deadly. Aidan wouldn't be surprised if the vengeful were had specifically brewed up that syringe of blood to be as chemically rife with the highest percent of pathogens possible.

Aidan had checked his body over that morning to note, with unsurprised, grim satisfaction, that he'd been right; the disease had spread exponentially overnight. Yet the encroaching darkness seemed to be held at bay, at least for now. Aidan tried to think of other possibilities, dredging up painful memories of Henry's final days, but there was no other catalyst that could have caused it besides…

But that was ridiculous. Infected vampires fed from the untainted and still died. Atlee had fed from Aidan _himself _and nothing had happened. Not a thing had seemed to even remotely slow the process of slowly disintegrating from the inside out, and yet Aidan's plague marks seemed to be perfectly content to stop where they were for now. Aidan lowered his shirt then immediately lifted it again, as if he and his marks were playing a ludicrous game of red-light-green-light and they would move only when he wasn't looking.

There was a knock on his door and he called through it, "yeah?"

"Josh is going to the hospital to pick some stuff up, I guess. Did you still need to see him before he goes?"

Aidan paused, but called back, "No, it's fine. I'll see him later." There was no reply from the stairwell, but Sally's retreating footsteps told him she was going to deliver his message.

It was two hours later when Josh returned, and Aidan could certainly hear him coming this time. Josh was shuffling along the stairs, taking each one very, very slowly, and there was a rustling and clattering sound that followed him down. Aidan got up and crossed to the door, opening it just in time to watch a stack of boxes with his friend's legs start to topple down the stairs.

Aidan shot forward to stabilize the unbalanced structure and person, and Josh jumped from the sudden help, almost dropping everything anyway. "Holy mother of—uh, thanks."

"Jesus, Josh," Aidan said, removing the top of the boxes and revealing Josh's flustered face. "What did you bring, half the hospital?"

"Just… stuff. Go," he said, jutting his chin at the door at the bottom of the stairs. "My arms are killing me."

Aidan obeyed, dropping the first of the boxes on the sole wooden table pushed up against the far wall of his bedroom. Josh huffed out a grunt as he dropped the other two down beside it, then immediately stretched his arms back and elicited a fiendish series of pops from his shoulders, back and neck. Aidan peered into one of the boxes and frowned at what he saw.

"Josh… I hate to break this to you, but I don't think 'What to Expect When You're Expecting' is going to have a chapter on curing vampire plague."

"Ha ha," Josh said, still sounding a little out of breath. "This is all a decoy. I couldn't just stroll on out with all the supplies I needed… what with hospitals generally looking down on theft and all that. So I 'cleaned out my locker' instead. Your stuff's underneath."

Aidan rifled through the tremendous amount of crap, most of which consisted of strategically placed old hoodies and various miscellaneous sheafs of paper, and removed whatever he spotted that was pre-packaged or otherwise medicine-related. "You cleaned out your locker? And found three boxes worth of junk?"

Josh rolled his eyes. "No, of course not. This is junk from the lost and found and recycling box, mostly. My locker is immaculate."

"Yeah, I know," Aidan said, suitably impressed with Josh's ingenuity. "I'm touched, by the way. You touched other people's nasty, germ-infested forgotten stuff for me."

"And don't you ever forget it," Josh griped, wiping his hands on his scrub pants. "Speaking of which. I'm gonna go wash my hands like fifty times." Josh took the stairs in short, quick bounds, leaving Aidan to arrange the items as he saw fit across the table. The rest of the junk got tossed back in the boxes and kicked to the side of the room.

Josh had certainly pulled out all the stops. Aidan glanced over the sticker labels neatly pasted across various plastic-wrapped tubes of fluid, frowning more and more as he read on. Hepatitis A, B and E, the newest batch for influenza plus the batches used last year and the year before that, MMR, Polio, Rabies, Smallpox, Yellow Fever…

Aidan frowned as Josh returned, a pair of latex gloves on now. "You picked me up the HPV vaccination? Really?"

"I picked up everything I could get my hands on."

"You think I need to worry about cervical cancer or genital warts?"

"This isn't _about _cervical cancer or genital warts. It's about trying everything."

"This is gonna be fun," Aidan grumbled, taking off his shirt and reaching over to unwrap a few antiseptic swabs.

"You shush," Josh said, unwrapping one of a slew of syringes and grabbing the nearest tiny glass jar of fluid. "Go sit."

"Yes, Nurse Levinson," Aidan intoned like a school kid. Josh tossed a crumpled-up plastic wrapper at him, which promptly met air resistance and fell lamely to the floor only two feet away from him.

Aidan liked to think he was a decent patient. The shots didn't hurt, though the HPV vaccine went in cold and thick, which was a little worrisome. Perhaps his very male body recognized that it didn't need to protect itself against diseases that attacked female sex organs. The process was long and protracted and utterly silent as Josh worked with a crease between his brows the whole time.

Somewhere halfway through the process, Aidan took to watching Josh work. The far wall and the fabric of his own pants were only so interesting, and Josh became his new subject of study.

His best friend had changed remarkably little over the many years they had known each other, but Aidan was starting to wonder if that was an illusion. Perhaps he'd just seen Josh too frequently over the past five or so years. Perhaps a bit of the youthful roundness of his face had been lost to time, for certainly Aidan was sure his jaw hadn't looked quite as defined when he'd stumbled upon the kid being beaten in the alley behind his old diner.

He'd lost weight steadily, that was for sure, and where uncertain, formless softness had once been his lean, lanky frame had beefed up and filled out a little. Josh would never be buff—his genetics seemed to forbid it—but he was toned and cut in a way that only constant, life-threatening fear and frequent, anxiety-fueled workouts could give. Aidan had known Josh had taken his training seriously, but he hadn't fully appreciated _how _seriously until he'd seen Josh land hit after hit into Liam with perfectly-aimed bullets. To hear Josh tell it, he'd also capped another wolf's knee before coming to Aidan's rescue. That was a difficult shot to make in the best of times, and Aidan wondered how many hours Josh had clocked at the local gym and firing range to get himself honed the way he had.

There was something else, too, something implacable that had done a much more thorough job altering Josh than anything that could be seen or measured outwardly. It lingered around his eyes and in the corner of his smile, even though Josh had never been anything less than an open book to him all these years. He was just a little shrouded, slightly obscured, and Aidan missed being able to see the outline of his true self as clearly as it had once been.

"Take a picture," Josh muttered, and when Aidan gave him a startled, guilty glance, Josh quirked a grin at him to show he was kidding.

"With what?" Aidan asked, making a smooth recovery. "My stolen and probably destroyed smartphone? Figures murderous werewolves would kill it right after my contract upgrade."

"Oh," Josh said, snapping off his gloves and going over to one of the boxes. He rummaged in it and pulled out something Aidan had initially assumed was lost-and-found trash—a T-Mobile bag. "I got that taken care of for you."

"You—" Aidan said, a frown coming to his face as Josh dug out a cell phone box and handed it over. "Jeez, Josh…" he said quietly, oddly touched by this simple gesture, even if it had been born out of practicality. "Will I ever stop owing you?"

Josh burst out laughing at that. "Owing me? So you live in backwards land now, huh?" He looked pleased as punch though, crossing his arms over his chest and beaming at Aidan as he freed the phone from the box and turned it on. "They were able to transfer most of your contacts over. I don't think they'd have let me get that for you if you and I didn't have possibly the worst T-Mobile track record known to man."

Aidan laughed. It was true; one of the living hazards of being a supe was the constant property destruction that came along with it. "Did you remember to punch our stamp card?"

"I know, right? 'Destroy nine cell phones, get the tenth free!'"

"Or possibly get banned for life."

"Nah, they love us. We're their best customers."

It felt indescribably good to sit there and shoot the shit with Josh while thumbing through the new controls on his phone. Aidan picked up the navigation system of his menu relatively quickly, using the phone stylus Josh had gotten for him. Being dead generally made touch screens not his friend, and he lamented the collective turn towards this technology that the world had unanimously decided on sometime while he was underground.

Aidan glanced up to say something, but abruptly forgot when he saw the look on Josh's face. The smile was gone and his eyes had taken on a soulful, sad look, heavy and full. Josh offered him a smile but was too slow to hide his earlier expression.

"Hey," Aidan said, turning to face him better, frowning and putting his phone down on the bed beside him. There were any number of things he could say after that, but he somehow knew he didn't need to go further. Josh knew what he meant. _It's alright. I don't want you to kill yourself worrying about me._

Similarly, he knew what Josh meant when he replied with a soft, "yeah," and gave him a better version of his earlier smile. _I know. I can't help it sometimes, but it's going to be okay._

There was a warm, companionable silence between them where they just existed together, their bond beyond the need for words.

Or, Aidan thought it had been a warm, companionable silence. Apparently to Josh it had taken a turn toward awkward, because he seemed to snap out of it and coughed in a way that was clearly just for the sake of making noise. Aidan gave him an amused, wry smile as Josh looked around the room for a moment, as if the remedy to his sudden discomfort would drop from the ceiling. He turned back to Aidan and looked like he was about to say something, but paused.

"Your… huh. Your… disease… spots look like they aren't spreading as bad as last night."

"... Disease spots?" Aidan asked, a little sadly. That was probably the grossest term he could think of for them. "But, you're right. The growth seems to be stalled, for the time being."

Gone was whatever had been ailing Josh previously. He sat down next to Aidan and grabbed his torso, twisting him so he could look at the marks closer. Aidan allowed himself to be manipulated into a position that was optimal for viewing, watching Josh curiously as he did so. "Damn. What do you think did it?"

"To be honest?" Aidan asked, shrugging, "Probably nothing. This might just be something the infection does that I didn't notice on Henry or Atlee."

"Yeah, but…" Josh said, and Aidan could hear the mounting excitement in his voice, though his friend was trying to hide it. "Still. This isn't a bad thing. It was going so fast last night…" Aidan was determined to keep silent on this subject, but Josh picked up on the implication far quicker than he would have liked. His head snapped up and Aidan tried not to wince as he turned to face him.

"You don't think… could it have been me?" he asked. The way he worded it and the hope on his face was almost too much for Aidan. Something that felt an awful lot like heartache reached through his chest as he offered Josh another shrug.

"Maybe. But, listen… don't—"

"Don't you dare tell me not to get my hopes up," Josh warned him.

Aidan chuckled. "I was going to say 'don't jump to conclusions.'"

"Same basic thing!" Josh said, but he seemed to be filled with a frenetic energy now. "We gotta keep this up, if it's even got a remote chance of being the thing that's delaying this. You hungry again? Could you eat now if you tried?" Josh asked, already pushing up the long-sleeved shirt he was wearing under his scrubs.

Aidan put his hands up to ward Josh off. "What? No! I already took a pint from you today, no more. In fact, you shouldn't bleed any more for me until at least three days have gone by."

"_What?_" Josh asked, aghast. "No way! That's forever!"

"Hey, I'm not thrilled to go without, either, but you're gonna start to feel extremely crappy if we do anything further before then." Aidan's pulse would be kicking up if he had one right about now.

"Well…" Josh said, clearly put out by this news. "Okay, new plan of action then. Instead of taking a pint every few days, you're gonna take smaller amounts every day. Twice a day, okay? Three times if we can swing it."

"What?" Aidan asked, staring at Josh like he was crazy, which, at this point, he very well could be. The stress may have gotten to him somewhere over the last five years. "Josh, that's ridiculous."

"Why?"

"Because—" But Aidan couldn't think of a reason. Gradual blood loss, a quarter-cup here, a quarter-cup there, would actually probably be healthier for Josh than losing a full pint all in one go every few days. The idea of feeding that often, breaking skin up to three times a day, like he was doing something as normal as sitting down to dinner? The thought made his head spin.

"Exactly," Josh said, clapping his hands. "You can't think of a single good reason not to. It's settled, then. You're getting dinner later tonight. Bring your appetite."

Aidan snorted and waved Josh off, which was unnecessary. Josh was already bounding up the stairs, muttering to himself, and Aidan couldn't really be bothered to wonder what he was off to go do.

He turned to face the wall and shuddered, hard, and a moment later he was in full feeding-frenzy mode. He lifted a hand to his face, dazed with wonder. This had never happened before; his fangs were out and his eyes blown wide and black at just the mere thought of getting to taste Josh again so soon, even if it was only a laughably small, tantalizing amount.

This could get complicated.


	5. The good

It was official—Aidan was developing some kind of deeply unfortunate, Pavlovian response to this setup. The moment he heard Sally and Nora call out their goodbyes on the floor above his he started counting the seconds until Josh arrived for dinner. Twenty excruciating minutes had elapsed before he heard him coming down the stairs, and by the time Josh pushed the door open, carrying a new box of supplies, Aidan's fangs were already out. It took all his willpower not to jump Josh like he was some sort of hapless back-alley blood bag, but he couldn't help the small rumbling sound that escaped his throat at the sight of him.

Josh, of course, noticed this, and the state Aidan was in, and put the pieces together at once. An embarrassed, surprised, and then vaguely apologetic look crossed over his face. That was when Aidan spotted what he was holding in the box; a series of small glass tubes, a stand for them to go in, a pre-packaged needle, and plastic tubing to be used as a tourniquet.

Now it was Aidan's turn to be embarrassed. With great effort, he sheathed his fangs and cleared his throat. "Got it."

"Yeah, it's gonna—I'm gonna be doing it this way. If that's cool." Josh slipped on his awkward word fumbling and fidgety gestures like an old coat.

"Alright," Aidan said, striving for nonchalance and not doing a very good job.

"Sorry," Josh said. He shook his head and put the box down on the edge of Aidan's bed. "It's just… Nora—"

"No, no! It's fine. Totally fine, understandable."

"She's worried about infection, and even though I told her I really don't think it _works _that way—"

"Josh, really," Aidan said, putting his hands up and wishing he was in any conversation but this one. It felt like he'd just been friend-zoned by his prom date and was now listening to a hasty (and needlessly lengthy) explanation about how he was just like a brother. Aidan was too old to feel this mortified by such weird, inconsequential things. "It's cool."

Uncomfortable silence settled down around them and Aidan sighed. This was to be expected. Josh busied himself with preparations for the blood drawing and Aidan tried to think of an excuse to leave the room that wouldn't make them even more awkward. He doubted his ability to keep his "normal face" on the moment Josh broke skin, which would be any minute now.

"So…" Josh said, carefully, as he swabbed at the crook of his elbow with an antiseptic wipe, "you don't think I can catch anything from you, either?"

"Nope… nope I don't," Aidan replied with a wry smile. Josh snapped the rubber tubing in place and Aidan swallowed around a dry, deserty ache in his throat at the sight of the veins of his arm starting to bulge outward. "... When you've been alive as long as I have you learn a thing or two about your own biology, and a thing or two about wolves."

"And nothing in that 'thing or two' suggests that we can contaminate each other with something like this?" Josh asked, becoming distracted and glancing up at Aidan for his reply.

"Josh, I can't even catch a cold from you."

"Hmm…" Josh said, frowning slightly as he pondered that. He looked at a point in the middle-distance while he thought, and Aidan took to staring unabashedly at his arm while he was preoccupied. Even without heightened vampire senses Aidan would have been able to see the strained, almost trapped blood in Josh's arm pumping against the surface of his skin.

_Snap out of it, _he coached himself, clearing his throat and managing to tear his eyes away. He resorted to picking at a threadbare part of his mattress. "Well… I can't blame you for wanting to do it this way. It would certainly be a lot less uncomfortable for you."

Josh spoke quickly, which made Aidan suspect he hadn't meant to blurt out what he said next. "No, I don't mind the other way… I mean—" He paused, back to uncomfortable, and floundered for a bit in the silence before he weakly finished it up with, "You know what I mean."

Aidan was like a shark that had scented blood… appropriately. He visibly perked up at that almost-admission and zeroed in on it, curiosity sharpening his gaze as he studied Josh's profile, his furrowed brow, and the slight, red creeping flush that was traveling up his neck. "Actually," he said, pleased that his voice was perfectly level and in-control, "I don't."

"Never mind," Josh said quickly, moving now to unwrap the pre-packaged needle. "I don't know what I'm talking about, this way is tidier."

Josh _did _like tidier. Aidan would give him that. He chose his words carefully, shrugging and glancing around the room as if idly looking for something interesting to watch. "I don't disagree. Only…" He glanced at Josh out of the corner of his eye and saw that he'd succeeded in engaging him in this subject. Josh looked up at him warily. "If I didn't know better I'd say you liked being fed from."

Josh's jaw dropped and he made expressions, but no sound for a second. "Aidan, _what?_"

"Come on, it's not like it's _uncommon,_" Aidan insisted, rolling his eyes. "There are scores of humans who think being fed on feels..." He gestured in the air, willing Josh to finish that thought for him.

No such luck. "Feels?"

Aidan shrugged. "Good."

Josh shook his head rapidly like he was trying to get water off his face. "Dude—"

"Alright, alright!" Aidan responded, putting his hands up. "Forget I said anything, I was just curious. No big deal."

"Jesus."

Aidan rolled his eyes. "Now get on with it before you lose that arm."

Josh seemed to realized he was still holding his needle aloft, his bound arm still badly missing its circulation, and returned to his task at hand. Aidan, meanwhile, turned away so he wouldn't be caught vamping out. Sure enough, out came the fangs as the sharp, quick copper of blood filled the air. Sometimes Aidan wondered how other people couldn't smell it. He'd spent almost 90% of his life as a vampire now, and among the many things about humanity that had faded was his memory of how scent used to work.

"Here, take your blood shots, you freak," Josh grumbled, putting the little stand of four small tubes down on the bedside table near Aidan. Aidan managed to wait for two entire seconds, giving Josh a smirk, before he reached over an uncapped the first one. Why he was trying to play it cool and act like he was casually sipping a cocktail rather than frantically snorting crack, he wasn't sure. Something about his pride didn't want to admit to Josh just how badly he needed this.

"So, while you're doing that, can I see your disease spots?" Josh asked, crossing his arms and resting one knee against the bed.

"Sure," Aidan said, downing the first of the vials of blood with an Elysian shiver as he hiked up the hem of his shirt. Josh leaned down and frowned at the marks, then pulled something out of his pocket. Aidan couldn't really be bothered to look to see what it was, because now that he'd had his first taste those other three tubes were not going to last long. With mild frustration, Aidan glanced at the few streaks and droplets of red that still clung to the inside of the first glass cylinder. It seemed like such a tragic waste.

Something cool touched down against Aidan's skin and he glanced down, frowning, to spot a yellow length of measuring tape being stretched against his side. He paused, second vial halfway to his mouth, and quirked an eyebrow at Josh. Josh wasn't paying attention, though, his brows knitted together in concentration as he pressed his thumb nail into a black mark on the tape, then removed it and mumbled the reading under his breath. Aidan cleared his throat.

"Care to fill me in on what you're up to?" he asked, taking a slower sip from the blood tube.

"Notes," Josh said in a distracted mutter, turning to head over to the table where the lost-and-found boxes were still stacked. He rummaged in one, one-handed, and pulled out a book that Aidan recognized as the same style as Josh's werewolf journal. Aidan frowned at his back as Josh uncapped a pen with his teeth and started scribbling on one of the pages.

"Okay," Aidan said. "So you're… what, going to become a vampire epidemiologist?"

Josh chuckled and shook his head, still facing the desk and book. Aidan finished the second vial and put it next to the other empty one, still frowning at his friend's back. "In a manner of speaking. So, your biggest section of marks clocks in at 3.4 inches at its widest diameter right now. We'll see what the growth rate is over the next few days."

"Okay," Aidan said again, thrown off by this far more than he should be. Instead of reaching for the third vial he got to his feet and pulled his shirt up over his head and tossed it behind him on the bed.

The marks looked much the same. He thought perhaps the edges of the spattering of black against his right collarbone was a little more pronounced, darker, but that was about the only change. He told Josh this much when the other man came back with his measuring tape and book.

"Weird… okay," Josh said, scrawling that as a note in the side margin. Aidan's eyebrows shot up—he thought Josh had just started writing in this book, but apparently he'd been wrong. He was already at least twenty pages into it.

"When did you…"

"I jotted what I could remember about the virus before I gathered up all the supplies from the hospital," Josh explained. "Also made my list of vaccines while I was doing that." He still sounded distracted and lost in his mind, tapping the pen against the page while he drew a messy box around his table of measurements. Aidan remained still, dinner on hold for a while as Josh took more numbers from his marks and wrote more notes about other weird things, like the elasticity of Aidan's skin and what it looked like when Josh scratched a part of his shoulder lightly with his nail. Aidan couldn't help wondering if Josh was just pulling these tests out of his ass.

"So…" Josh began, finishing up a scribbled sentence about Aidan's coloring (which should have probably just read "vampire pale, as always"), "you've had donors who were in it because they liked being 'fed on,' as you call it?"

Aidan didn't respond for a beat, not sure why Josh was bringing this subject up again when he seemed so eager to avoid it just moments before. He approached with caution. "Believe it or not. It's more common than you think."

"Not surprised, trust me. Just… what _is _it they say is so great about it?" Josh glanced up into Aidan's face, and at his expression, he tacked on, "Out of curiosity."

"For your research?" Aidan joked, and Josh rolled his eyes at him. "Just kidding. Well… these particular… donors," Aidan said, resisting the urge to toss up air quotes around the word, "I never made much of a habit of talking to after. Or before. But the few who _did _share told me that it was like… I don't know." He shrugged again and tried to think of the exact phrasing, but as with many of his memories, it was hazy and almost inaccessible, buried under decades of cobwebs and countless other competing images and sounds. "Being adrift. Like they could relax and lose themselves in the feeling. They described it as a sort of 'pleasant daze.'"

Josh huffed out a small laugh, and Aidan couldn't think why. "You have something to share with the class?" he prompted.

Josh glanced up at him, regret for his reaction clear on his face. For a moment they were quiet, but Aidan waited him out patiently. "It's just—" Josh shrugged, almost harshly, like he could remove the scrutiny like a jacket. "It sure doesn't feel relaxing to me."

Aidan's heart sank, though it was ridiculous. Of course Josh didn't like being fed on—the vast majority of the people he'd taken blood from in the past sure as hell hadn't. He wasn't sure why it felt disappointing, like a black mark against his name or a bad report card. "Sorry," he mumbled.

Josh picked up on his guilt at once and his brown eyes went wide with horror. "No, not like—not like that, I swear," he said, moving so he could sit down next to Aidan on the bed and explain. Aidan's previous remorse and discomfort turned back into confusion as he frowned at Josh. "It's not… _bad_. It's just not relaxing."

Aidan paused for a moment, but his frown was still in place. Josh was looking at him hopefully, like Aidan could telepathically discover what he really meant with some hitherto undisclosed vampire power. "... I'm afraid you're going to have to clarify what you mean by that."

Josh groaned and carded a hand through his hair, agitated. "Instead of making me—what did they say, dazed? It's sort of—" he cut himself off abruptly with a soft "_agh_" sound of frustration. "I don't know. Every word I think of sounds stupid."

Aidan turned to face Josh better, his gaze unblinking. "Try me." He didn't know why this was so important to him, but sheer curiosity forced him to press on.

"Invigorating? Electric? Stimulating?" At Aidan's face, Josh glared at him. "You asked for the stupid words, so I gave you the stupid words. It makes me feel sort of over-sensitized."

"And… that's not bad," Aidan asked, slowly, like he was trying to understand complex algebra.

"I said no." Josh sounded a little peevish and snappy now, so Aidan backed off.

"Okay, okay. Sorry. Just… strange, is all."

Aidan was, once again, prepared to abandon this topic and move on, but now he had piqued Josh's curiosity, and apparently his genetically-ingrained fretting. "Why?" Josh asked, his eyes going wide with concern. "Have you heard of that being bad, before? That feeling?"

"No, definitely not _bad_," Aidan said, before he could stop himself.

Of course, Josh latched onto that strangely-worded reply, and Aidan fought the urge to kick himself. "'Definitely?' What do you mean by 'definitely?'"

"Nothing, Josh," Aidan said, the two words coming out as an exasperated sigh.

"No, you don't get to cop out when you forced me to call your feeding habits 'electric.'" Aidan paused; he couldn't really argue with that logic.

Still. This was not a conversation he wanted to be having right now. Or ever. "Just… some _other _people I've fed on in the past have said that it feels good… in the opposite direction. If you catch my drift."

Apparently Josh did not. He gave him a bewildered look, repeating the words "in the opposite direction" silently to himself like it was the Sphinx's riddle. Aidan groaned.

"You're gonna make me say it out loud?" he asked. "Really?"

"I don't know what you—" Josh started, then abruptly stopped. There it was; the pieces had clicked into place. Red rushed to Josh's ears and he made a truly priceless face at Aidan. Aidan sighed and rolled his eyes.

"You asked. And see, you don't have to _worry, _since that's obviously not the situation here."

"_Obviously!" _Josh exclaimed, looking a little squeamish. "Jesus, Aidan, what sort of people did you feed on?" Aidan lifted an eyebrow at Josh and opened his mouth to playfully supply detailed answers, but Josh back-pedaled at once. "No, nope. Never mind, I don't want to know."

"Good boy," Aidan chuckled, finally reaching over to get the last two vials of blood as Josh grumbled to himself and closed his book. He took them both in fast shots, letting the nourishing, rejuvenating feeling wash over him and temporarily rob him of all other thoughts.

It was probably a good thing they were going to be handling the feeding this way, Aidan mused. He really didn't want Nora to get wind of the fact that he'd insinuated her fiance was a little _too _stimulated by a vampire mouthing at his skin—particularly this vampire.

The thought was amusing, but also vaguely troubling to Aidan; not good, but not bad.


	6. The heat

Josh's notebook of vampire plague research expanded so much over the next week he thought he might have to invest in a new book soon. In every spare moment he was pulling it out, writing more questions to himself, ruminating on possible answers, looking at data charts and regraphing points of information over and over. He took a few of his accrued vacation days from the hospital (which had been racking up during the year and a half where he no longer needed to ask for every post-full moon night off.) If Nora disapproved, she was being quiet about it, and Josh suspected it was taking all of her willpower not to interfere. She gave him his space, which he appreciated, but at the same time he could feel a distance between them they hadn't experienced since before Aidan's and Sally's disappearances.

Aidan's marks were expanding very, very slowly. The fact that they were expanding at all was disappointing to Josh, but he would take what he could get. After the sharp claw of terror that had surged through his adrenaline-worn body the night of Liam's attack, when he'd seen those dark marks crawling their way across Aidan, so quickly the movement could be easily followed with his eyes, Josh had mentally given his best friend about a week to live.

That one-week mark had come and gone, and against all odds, Aidan was hanging in there. Some days it was almost possible to forget he was sick at all. When something amused him or he was feeling particularly sated after a blood-shots feeding, he seemed almost normal.

Other days, it showed. Though the spread was suppressed, it was still there, and more than once Aidan had interrupted one of their bantering, humorous talks with an explosive coughing fit. Josh had known that vampires could cry, and break out in a sweat, but he had only seen Aidan do either of those things a scant handful of times. Almost four times now he had caught a dotting of moisture prickling across Aidan's forehead or the back of his neck, but like clockwork Aidan sought to distract him the moment Josh started to look too worried.

For the most part, they talked science. Aidan had free reign to flip through Josh's book whenever he wanted, and even added some input of his own here or there, giving Josh a little bit more insight into how vampires worked. Apparently there was a very mild healing agent that could be secreted from their fangs, but not all vampires had these glands. Aidan theorized they were in the process of evolving that aspect out of certain bloodlines, and that a particularly vicious, traditional maker who would frequently bleed their victims dry would have no need to pass on such a trait to any family they sired. It was morbid, but made sense, and Josh had playfully told Aidan that meant that he was "one of the good guys." He'd expected some sort of eye roll or joke, but instead Aidan had looked a painful mix of touched and saddened.

In fact, that was the look Aidan wore more and more frequently as the days dragged on and they got no closer to finding a cure. Josh tried to imagine what sorts of things would be running through his own mind if he knew he only had possibly a few months, at best, left to live after centuries of existing, but drew an absolute, perfect blank. There was really no way he could even begin to guess.

In spite of the fatalistic turn Aidan seemed to be taking, Josh's blood was, undeniably, contributing to some sort of positive change. Aidan jokingly remarked that it could be the HPV vaccination, and Josh had asked him if he was ever going to let that go. The answer was no, no he would not.

Nevertheless, Josh could think of no other reason that the spread would be so subdued by something like that. What was beyond frustrating was how doggedly determined Aidan seemed to avoid the subject. Every time Josh brought up this strongest of the theories Aidan brushed it off with a joke, gave him a somewhat frustrated, tired smile, or blatantly changed the subject. For the life of him Josh couldn't understand why. The only possibilities he could think up were that Aidan felt uncomfortable about the fact that Josh had really tasty blood, or that, like Nora, he was worried Josh was putting too much stock into that hope. At first it was troubling, then baffling, but it had finally taken the turn to irritating somewhere in the last two days.

Time was forever not on their side. With every day that went by, Aidan looked a little more worn out, and Josh was one day closer to his first shift. Neither of them thought the curative powers of his blood would be viable any longer after that first full moon, and though Josh had brought it up more than once, Aidan staunchly refused to feed any more than twice per day on four of those maddeningly small glass tubes.

Luckily, Aidan rarely ever came out of the basement anymore, and when he did he had no need to go into the fridge. In there, tucked into an empty cardboard case of the kind of beer only Josh liked, was a growing army of more plastic tubes of blood. It was easy enough to sneak into the bathroom shortly after feeding time, gently re-open the puncture mark, and drain another quarter cup or so into "emergency stocks" for after Josh's first turn. He knew if Aidan, or Nora, or hell, even Sally found out what he was doing they would be livid. the way he saw it, though, was that there really wasn't any other choice. It was a little fatigue and slowness on his part or a death sentence for Aidan. Objectively, anyone could see what the best decision between those two was.

He'd have to wear long sleeves under his scrubs for weeks after he went back to work, though. His arms were every color of the rainbow in healing and new bruises, and Josh had started to run out of good places to stick the needle. He wasn't looking forward to it, but he knew very soon he'd have to move down to the tender underside of his wrist. Those shots and IVs always hurt so much more.

One of the only blessings was that there was still no sign of Liam. Either he was plotting something that required weeks of preparation, or Josh's bullets had actually made more of an impact on him than he'd thought and he needed that much time to heal. Somehow Josh didn't think that was the case, though. They'd had a few family meetings over it, but the consensus was to stay put. Liam was an excellent tracker, to hear Nora tell it, and he would find them even if they rented out a shitty motel room for the remainder of the month. Might as well stick it out in the comfort of their own home.

"You know what the obvious solution is," Josh told Aidan that night as he snapped his tourniquet in place and hunted for the least-bruised looking patch of skin. Aidan looked at him with tired curiosity, and Josh said with a perfectly straight face, "We kill Liam right before the next full moon, then find another wolf to scratch me so I'll have another month's supply of pre-shift blood for you."

He'd meant for it to be a joke, but Aidan's stricken look told him he had missed his mark. Aidan swallowed in what looked like a painful way and muttered, "Josh. In what world is that supposed to be funny?"

"Eesh, I was just kidding," Josh said sheepishly, though he tacked on, "Not about the whole killing Liam thing though. That's definitely still on."

Josh knew something was wrong the second the needle broke skin. He'd misjudged the angle, and before he could do more than yank the needle out and say "Shit," a perfect spurt of blood shot up and away from his arm. Josh jerked, dodging the spray, but a trickle still slid down his arm towards his elbow.

Immediately he glanced over to Aidan, expecting to see the vampire leaping at him with his fangs out, but Aidan was actually sitting on his hands, his wide, black eyes fixed on Josh's arm with an unrivaled intensity. All weariness was gone. Josh froze in place, employing the "play dead" technique one might use on a grizzly. Aidan was infinitely more dangerous than one, after all.

After an aching, long moment, Aidan spoke. "You should skip tonight." His voice sounded positively wrecked with suppressed hunger.

Josh could have fallen over. In the face of what had to be a sight more tempting than a geyser of sparkling water in the Sahara, Aidan was telling Josh he should take the night off from feeding him because he'd accidentally nicked a vein. Josh shook his head, then found his voice.

"No," he said, with an amount of conviction that startled even him. "Hell no." He dropped the needle and the tourniquet in the box at the foot of the bed and walked resolutely over to Aidan, who was now looking stricken with something like panic.

"Josh," Aidan began, but Josh cut him off before he could continue.

"Eat," Josh said, sticking his arm out. "Only, if you wouldn't bite down too hard, I'd appreciate it."

"Josh, _no_. What Nora said about infection—"

"Was total bull and you and I both know it. Eat." josh waved his arm at Aidan and Aidan grimaced and turned his head away like a kid refusing his broccoli.

"Be that as it may," Aidan said, each word sounding like it was being punched out of him, "I am not safe to be around right now. For many…" he paused, swallowed hard, and continued in a barely audible growl, "_many _reasons."

Josh felt his stomach flip a little at that, but he wasn't afraid, not really. It was something else that did it, perhaps a little shot of adrenaline. "Bull," he said again, quieter. "You aren't going to hurt me. You're pretty well-fed, all things considered. You'll be fine, I'll be fine. Come on."

Instead of responding well to his quiet, calm request, Aidan screwed his dark eyes shut, as if doing so could transport him away from Josh.

That was the last straw. Josh placed himself bodily in front of Aidan, and before the vampire could make a move to dive away, push him, or do anything else stupid, Josh shoved his bleeding arm right against his face.

The sound that broke free of Aidan's throat was savage, despairing, and desperate all at once, and it shot down Josh's spine and into his toes right as Aidan's willpower crumbled. The other man grabbed him and the next thing Josh knew he was staring at the ceiling. It took him a second to realize Aidan had tossed him over onto his back on the bed and was hunched over him, mouth moving hungrily and frantically over his arm. Josh waited to feel the wrenching of his skin under teeth, but there was no pain. With dull wonder, Josh realized Aidan had not bitten him at all, instead gleaning with little nutrients he could from the very faint trickle of blood easing out of his puncture wound.

It had to be worse than drinking through a coffee stirrer. Aidan was making frustrated, frequent keening sounds, and though Josh had just been thrown a moment earlier, he found his arms moving of their own accord.

Aidan jerked back twitchily as Josh's arm moved away from his face, looking torn between following the source of blood and staying perfectly still, and Josh took advantage of his momentary indecision to push himself back upright. This seemed to snap Aidan out of it, at least a little, but that wasn't what Josh was trying to achieve.

With a sort of stressed out, maxed out impatience he only reached when he was truly at the end of his rope, Josh shoved Aidan backwards so he was sitting down in bed with his back against the wall. The harsh edges of remorse were visible in Aidan's eyes, though it was harder to read his expression when he was vamped out this way. He tried to speak, probably to apologize, but Josh had climbed up on the bed and positioned himself closer to Aidan before he could. Every muscle in the vampire's body froze again, and Josh cocked his head to the side and lowered his neck so close to Aidan that he could feel the cool presence of the other man's face less than half an inch away from his skin.

"I'm tired of abusing my arms. Drink from here."

"Josh," Aidan croaked out miserably, and Josh snapped.

"_Just do it, Aidan, I swear to God_—"

That, at last, was enough. Josh felt the sharp, sweet bite as fangs broke skin, and then the world melted.

He could see what they meant now, finally, about the floating, flying, liquefying feeling. It was neck feeding—that was the trick. Josh bit back a groan, badly, and Aidan's arms closed around his torso, tugging him hard. Josh toppled over onto him, messily and awkward, but couldn't be bothered to feel that sort of minor discomfort. His eyes fluttered shut and he alternately forgot to breathe and breathed too hard, heavy and deep.

From somewhere inside a hot, sweet daze of bright white, he became aware of their bodies, slowly, bit by bit. Aidan's hand was tangled in his hair, holding his head firmly in place against his shoulder while he fed. His other hand was planted on his back, nails digging into his shirt, his arm wrapped around Josh like a vice. It was as if Aidan had looked into a Gorgon's eyes right as he pulled Josh close and had frozen that way in stone, unyielding and marble except for the movements of his lips across Josh's skin and the animalistic sounds of need and pleasure he was making near Josh's ear.

Josh was tangled up in him, one arm shakily propping himself up, nestled against Aidan's body, and the other grasping way too hard at Aidan's shoulderblade. He'd wound up between his legs, body twisted to the side and flush up against his roommate.

Aidan made a sound between a moan and a sigh of frustration and straight-up nuzzled Josh's neck, his hands grasping him a little tighter. Josh held his breath, eyes wide, and then Aidan was licking him again. With each drag of his tongue Josh's body jerked a little, not from pain or from being tickled, but something like a jolting shock. _Electric, _his brain supplied again, weakly.

Aidan's hand grasped Josh's hair, tugged a little, and Josh, who had just been starting to solidify again from all the twitching, melted once more against him. A louder groan escaped from him and he angled his head away to allow Aidan better access, though the vampire didn't seem to want to bite any further. Instead Aidan put his head in close, hovering just inches from Josh's exposed collarbone, and breathed hard, hot and heavy against his skin. For a few crackling moments they remained just like that.

Then reality flooded back in, and with it, every single ounce of Josh's acutely sharpened sense of extreme mortification.

"Um," he said, and the rest of the daze shattered from around Aidan. A second later he was released and Josh awkwardly pushed himself up and back, losing balance and flopping backwards onto his ass at the foot of the bed. For a long beat they just stared at each other.

Then Aidan's eyes went back to normal and he mouthed a few things wordlessly before settling for just shutting his mouth. Josh coughed into his hand, just to have something to do, and Aidan frowned, his mouth twisting, and looked off to the side.

"Um… sorry. That I sort of…"

"What?" Aidan asked, snapping his eyes back to Josh in stupefaction.

"... Forced your hand," Josh finished his thought over Aidan's interjection.

Aidan shook his head quickly, then tilted his chin down and looked at Josh like he was supremely unwell. "I don't—that really wasn't… there's no need," he finished lamely.

Josh reached up to rub his neck, the way he normally did when he was nervous, and it came away smudged with red. He stared at it, and then the thought of Nora sprang into his mind in a clear, cold firework burst. Whatever lingering daze he was experiencing vanished like he'd taken a splash of icy water to the face.

"That wasn't… too smart."

"No," Aidan said, shaking his head and looking a little dizzy for a moment. Josh wondered if it was post-feeding loopiness. "Atlee."

Very slowly, Josh frowned. Then, only half-joking, he added, "Aidan. I'm _Josh_, remember?"

"No… sorry," Aidan shook his head. "I mean, if Nora asks… Atlee fed on me. While he was driving me to the Dutch, to see if my blood could cure them. Atlee was… really infected. He turned to dust not an hour after he bit me, even. And I never caught anything from him."

"Oh. I didn't know that." Josh paused, cleared his throat, and nodded at nothing. "Well… that's promising. That's good."

"Yup," Aidan said, looking winded now even though that was impossible. "Good."

Then the heavy silence settled down on them again and Josh got up to start fussing over the box of supplies. A second after he stood, though, Aidan was standing right next to him, arms out. Josh jumped a little and said, "what?" very loudly, like he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

"Just—" Aidan put his hands down and took a deliberate step back, providing Josh space. "Don't walk so soon. Blood and all."

"How much did you take?" Josh asked, dimly. The thought hadn't even crossed his mind, but he had no idea how long they'd been in that tangled heap of limbs and heat together.

Aidan shook his head. "About a half a pint. Still, more than you usually give me. I—sorry." He grimaced and looked to the side of the room, but Josh shook his head.

"No, that's what I wanted. You need to have more—"

"Josh, just, no. Not right now, let's not talk about this right now, okay? I can't."

The response was so sudden, fervent and candid that Josh shut up at once. Staticy discomfort settled down over them again and Josh bit his lip, worry racing through his body and his eyebrows knitting together. "Should I leave?" he asked, officially entering full-on fret mode.

"For now, yeah," Aidan said, his tone gentle. "I think I just… need to rest." the vapire turned towards the bed and glanced at Josh over his shoulder. "Thanks."

"Um, no problem," Josh muttered, feeling heat rise in his face along with something almost like shame. "Any… time."

He could hardly retreat from the basement quick enough.


	7. The growth

_Author's note: :X So, funny story. I was waiting for my bf and gf to both be free on the same day so we could keep watching Being Human season 3, and last night I finally saw episode 9… (spoilers ahead.)_

_I had NO IDEA that the actual cure to the virus was legitimately werewolf blood. Here I was thinking my plotline was so clever and original. Now no one will believe that I had no idea this was the legit answer to the virus! ;_;_

_To my reviewers: thank you! :) I appreciate you taking the time to comment, especially my most recent reviewer who doesn't even have an ffnet account. It's such a tiny fandom sometimes it feels like there's barely anyone out there (echo, echo, echo…) so feedback is always loved._

* * *

Aidan wasn't surprised when he smelled Nora's combination of wolf genes and cucumber shampoo approaching down the stairs that lead to his basement. He knew it was only a matter of time before they had it out, and he could only hope it would be a clearing of the air rather than another argument.

Preceding her knock, Aidan opened the door to his basement bedroom just as Nora was lifting her hand. She started slightly and their eyes met, a wealth of emotions communicating between them in an instant. Guilt, apprehension, nervousness, sadness, and slight fear shot between them in a single electrical current of nonverbal cues, and at once Aidan knew this would not be a fight.

"Come on in," he said, stepping aside to allow her entry.

Nora slid silently into the room but remained hovering near the door, much the way Josh had when they'd first started up their feeding arrangement the day after Liam's attack. Aidan smiled slightly at that mirror image, a nervous werewolf clasping their hands in front of them near his desk, and went over to sit on the edge of his bed. He figured she would want to speak her piece first and remained quiet, and sure enough, after a moment of faltering silence, she broke it.

"Aidan… I, first off… how are you?" Nora asked, finally spanning the distance between them and taking a seat at the foot of his bed. He scooted over to give her more room and turned to face her better, not wanting to look like he was shutting her out in any way. Her eyes were soft with concern, her face an open book the way Josh's so often was.

"Not bad, all things considered," Aidan answered, truthfully. "Henry was doing much worse at this point when he got sick. I seem to be hanging in there a bit better."

Nora nodded and gave him a faint smile. "Good. So, maybe… maybe Josh's blood is helping, after all."

This was one of the subjects Aidan had known would come up, and with a careful effort to appear noncommittal, he shrugged and tilted his head to the side. "Maybe. Who knows?"

Nora nodded and looked at her lap, letting a less uncomfortable silence fall over them for a moment while they each got lost in their own thoughts. When she spoke again it was with great care.

"I saw the… bite marks," she said, though nothing in her tone was accusatory. "Josh explained what happened and it sounds like that was all on him." Aidan, not having anything to say about that, opted for silence once more and Nora moved on. "He also said that it's very unlikely that what you have can be passed onto him. I believe the exact phrase he used was 'damn near impossible.'"

Aidan inwardly cringed, though he didn't show any external reaction to that. The wording made it sound like the bites had been a point of contention between them, at least for a while, and that it had perhaps degenerated into another fight. Nora did seem somewhat mollified now, and Aidan highly suspected it was because she'd had a more emotional version of this talk with Josh before coming down here to see him.

"It's true," Aidan offered, wanting to both backup Josh and put her mind at ease. "I didn't even catch the bug when I was bitten by an infected vampire."

Nora nodded, but Aidan could tell she wasn't convinced. In all truth, he couldn't blame her. He knew what it felt like to be worried about Josh, and most of their concerns created an overlapping Venn diagram in the middle, only very few problems falling directly to Aidan's left or Nora's right.

"And… I never…" Nora cleared her throat and abruptly turned her face up to the ceiling. Aidan actually looked up too, wondering if she had heard some disturbance from upstairs, but a second later he realized she was blinking unshed tears back into her eyes, trying to will them to stay put through gravity. A jolt of shock traveled through his core at the sight. "I never thanked you. For what you did for me."

"Oh," Aidan said, still feeling dumbfounded. "Nora. Of course. It just—I wanted to try to put as much right as I could. I'd do it again in a heartbeat." He paused, and, trying to inject a little levity into the situation, added, "Figuratively speaking, of course."

Nora let out a watery laugh and turned to face him, her eyes still very shiny, and Aidan gave her a relieved, lopsided smile in return. Then she was hugging him and it was only a few fumbling seconds later that he figured out how to do it back.

"I'm so sorry," she muttered against his shoulder, and he wondered what for. The earlier fight? His fate in general? The fact that the world seemed to be forever determined to stack all the decks against them?

Aidan just muttered, "Me, too," in response to everything and closed his eyes.

* * *

_hey,_

Aidan paused, staring at the three-letter word and the mark of punctuation. It was a while before he deemed it passable and continued his text.

_hey, it's Aidan. _

He deleted that part. She would know it was him since all cell phones had caller ID.

_hey, sorry I've been so out of touch. I'm down with something really nasty and won't be leaving the house for a while. You should probably stay away so you don't catch it too._

He sighed and read the message over, not liking it, but not finding any other way to make it better. He couldn't exactly tell her the truth. A wry smirk quirked the corner of his mouth as he tried to picture _that _text. _Hey, Kat, sorry I've been so out of touch. I'm dying of vampire plague so you should probably keep your distance so we don't get too attached. It's been fun! - Aidan._

Aidan let out another, more frustrated sigh and punched "send" on his phone before he could overthink the message or chicken out and refuse to send it.

It was barely half a minute later when his phone buzzed in his hand, showing the preview of her reply. _hey you! _He clicked the little envelope open.

_hey you! sorry to hear that… but I'm glad you're not dead in a ditch somewhere! sure you don't need me to bring anything over? soup, Nyquil, maybe some cocaine? oops, sorry, forgot… you're DNAJ :) seriously tho, feel better soon!_

Aidan smiled down at the message, impressed by the sheer speed with which she'd typed and sent it. DNAJ had become a little inside joke, which stood for "definitely not a junkie." Aidan contemplated writing back to her, just to exchange a joke or to reassure her that he didn't need anything, but in the end he figured there was no point. Each message he sent her would be just one more she would have to delete after he was gone, one more painful reminder that she'd lost someone who could have been a friend or something more. Aidan was tired of leaving a string of collateral damage behind him, and would do what he could to assure that as few people as possible were wounded in his wake.

Besides, if he was being honest with himself, Kat wasn't the person he wanted to spend these last days with. She was sweet, funny, had made him feel interested, youthful and engaged in a way he hadn't felt in years, but he hadn't known her long enough for her to carve a home out for herself in his heart. Perhaps if he'd been infected later he would have come clean to her, and asked her to join him for the most depressing last few dates of his life, but that wasn't the case. It was not only better for her, but also for himself and the others if she stayed away.

Aidan put his phone aside and ran his hands through his hair. He was just thinking it was almost time for Josh to make his first appearance since their uncomfortable encounter the night previous when he heard him moving towards the top of the stairs above. Aidan sighed and waited while Josh puttered around, doing God knew what. He was likely stalling, trying to go through different scripts in his mind for what to say.

Aidan screwed his eyes shut and blew out a slow, long breath, shaking his head a little at the end of it. Thinking about last night was not a good idea right now, or ever, really. He'd know it hadn't been a good idea, but that had never, not once, stopped Aidan from doing something in the past. He supposed 260 years really wasn't long enough to change the impulsive side of him that stubbornly clung to life even now.

Josh finally arrived right as Aidan gathered his composure. Aidan was prepared for a quiet, awkward feeding session, but froze when he saw Josh's face.

God, he looked terrible. He was paler than usual and looked like he hadn't slept at all last night. He was blinking slowly, evidently too tired to feel all that weird around Aidan. Perhaps the delay upstairs hadn't been script-running… it was very possible he was simply too tired to remember how stairs were supposed to work.

"Hey," Aidan said, standing up slowly, as his body still ached a little these days. "You look sort of really awful."

Josh looked over at him, his brown eyes dazed, but gave him a smile nevertheless. "Aw, thanks. That's so sweet."

Aidan's relief was so palpable he thought it would knock them over like a concussion blast. Josh was acting normal, not freaking out or making things worse. Aidan had no idea what had changed between last night and this morning, but he wasn't complaining. "Any time," Aidan replied, but was frowning back at his friend a moment later. "Seriously though. You don't look well."

"No offense, man… but I don't think you're the one to talk," Josh joked lightly, but his tired expression faded to that look of soft worry Aidan hated so much to see on him. Before Aidan could tell him to knock it off, Josh cleared his throat. "So, ah. I'd like to check your marks, if that's okay."

And there was a touch of the weirdness Aidan had expected. Before yesterday Josh had just made a motion with his thumb and a whistling sound to signal that he wanted Aidan to take off his shirt so he could take those measurements. Now he was acting like it was his first day at the hospital all over again, blushing when a drugged-out patient had strolled through the halls with her flapping hospital gown on backwards. Aidan sighed and pulled his shirt off, deliberately giving the action no weight or pause so it could be robbed of its taboo factor.

Josh had his book, pen and measuring tape ready, and seemed to get over whatever momentary discomfort he had at seeing Aidan shirtless. Aidan turned to the familiar far wall and started to zone out as was his practice during this daily ritual, but when Josh measured a spot at his ribs, then hastily measured it again and a third time in rapid succession, Aidan glanced over at him, curious. Josh had his nose buried in his plague notebook, a deep frown on his face, then measured Aidan a fourth time. Aidan was just about to ask when Josh let out a sudden, startling laugh. Aidan actually jumped.

"Aidan," Josh said, turning his too-wide eyes at his roommate and breaking out into a broad grin that took Aidan completely off-guard, "This one shrank."

Aidan frowned at Josh, then glanced down at his ribs as if the marks would be spelling out the word "_psyche!_" across his skin. "You sure?" he asked.

Instead of snarking at him, Josh measured him a fifth time and checked his notebook again. "Dead sure. This one shrank by .5 inches."

"Ooooh," Aidan said, hamming up the sarcasm for effect, but Josh was undaunted. His hands moved deftly across Aidan's shoulders, biceps, neck and temples, measuring at barely believable speeds.

"Zero growth for these three," Josh said, tapping three of Aidan's marks, "And only .25 inches of growth on this one," he said, resting his fingers against the last mark. "Aidan… this is big."

"Thought you just said they weren't growing," Aidan said, aiming for humor but sounding more grumpy than anything.

Josh finally seemed to pick up on his tone and did a small double-take at him. "Aidan. You're—you're not getting worse. This is big. Aren't you—" He struggled for words, gesturing in the air. "At least _a little _stoked about this?"

Aidan sighed and turned to face Josh, but the moment Josh saw his expression he began speaking again.

"You—wow. You really still don't even want to entertain the idea that maybe, just _maybe, _we've found a way to keep you alive. I just—_why?_"

They were going to fight again, and Aidan didn't want that for a slew of different reasons, but here it was. "Josh, just—do you ever stop to think maybe Nora is right to be worried about you here? That you're, just _maybe_," he said, mirroring Josh's earlier comment, "imagining things because you want it to be true?"

Josh gaped at him, shock and hurt transforming into anger at once. _Goddamn it, _Aidan thought, wishing he could take back the past minute. _Why do I always do this?_

"I'm not imagining this," Josh said, shoving the book at Aidan and pointing at the table of data and dates. "This. Is. Real." With each word he jabbed the page again. "I don't know why in the world you refuse to see it! This is amazing, this is a miracle, we are on the _right track._"

"Josh," Aidan began, feeling a prickling, trapped sensation crawling up his spine, the familiar urge to run from the sort of soul-rending conversational muck-outs only he and Josh seemed to have.

"No," Josh said, shaking his head. "No. I don't know what the deal is with you and Nora always trying to protect me from—what, from _stress? _Like I haven't handled it ever before in my life. This isn't _about me, _Aidan. This is your _life._"

"Maybe that's it," Aidan snapped, getting to his feet. "Ever think that? Maybe this is just what's supposed to happen. Maybe 260 years is _too long _for anything to stay alive and now is just my time. I've accepted that possibility, Sally has, Nora has—it's just _you _who's stuck, Josh!"

"I'm stuck because I see promising results and pursue them," Josh said, letting out a half-laugh half-scoff. "That makes perfect sense."

"They aren't going away," Aidan said, struggling not to grit his teeth. How had this degenerated so fast? He'd been expecting to have an argument with Nora, not Josh. "You might think that one is smaller, but even if they keep staying the same size, this is temporary. What do you want me to do, drain you dry to see if that gets them down another inch and a half?"

"I never said—" Josh insisted, but now it was Aidan's turn to cut him off.

"And we both know this probably won't work anymore once the full moon next month! We _know _that. Why won't you _accept it_?"

"_Because I can't_!" Josh shouted, his voice rising to a volume they had yet to achieve during their fights before now. Whatever Aidan had been so desperate to get across to him died in his throat as the two of them simply looked at one another. Josh was breathing hard, the sharp, aggressive edge of emotion coloring every feature, bringing life and rage to his eyes and skin.

"I can't, okay?" Far from his earlier shout, his voice was now soft, almost broken. "You're right. I'm not accepting it. Not yet, not unless you turn to dust right in front of me. I won't stop trying because I _can't. _I can't lose you without trying _everything. _I won't. I can't."

Josh was getting repetitive, but Aidan remained dumbstruck, unable to move or speak as Josh raked his hands through his hair, leaving them clasped at the back of his head like he was ready to tuck under his desk during a bomb drill. "You're—my—" Josh swallowed hard, stopping after those two words, and Aidan felt like a taut cello string had been cut in his core. All his strength left him in a rush and it was all he could do to not sit down, hard, on the floor right there as the feeling that took its place crashed over him in an unstoppable wave.

Josh took a few deep breaths and cleared his throat, then lowered his arms. Aidan was still staring at him, lost and bereft in his own internal tide, but Josh wasn't quite done.

"So fuck you, Aidan. Maybe you're ready to go, but I'm not ready for you to. Not by a long shot."

Aidan took in a breath he didn't need and let it out slowly. When he dug his voice out from the wreckage of turmoil, all he managed to say was, "Okay."

It shouldn't have been enough, not by a long shot, but Josh's lingering anger transformed into his softer, sad look, one of his eyebrows slightly lower than his other in an expression so familiar to Aidan he could trace it in his sleep. Nora called it his "puppy" face behind Josh's back.

"Okay," Josh said, his voice slightly raspy from emotion and the shouting he'd done, and as he turned to get the box of supplies he'd brought down, Aidan closed the distance between them and pulled him in tight. Josh jerked a little at the sudden movement, but a second later the two of them were hugging hard.

"I don't want to leave you," Aidan muttered into Josh's shoulder, able to say to his jacket what he couldn't say to his face.

"I know," Josh said back, his voice not working. The words came out as a whisper.

* * *

After Josh had gone and Aidan had fed from the eight rather than four tubes Josh had insisted on giving him, the vampire lay on his back in his bedroom, staring at the ceiling where he knew the stairwell was, and above that where Nora and Josh's bedroom stood. The source of his midnight musings was not his quite possible impending death, his guilt over Kat or Kenny, his worries that Liam would return, or even his fear of taking too much blood from Josh.

Being alive for over two centuries had introduced Aidan to countless people. Most of the faces ran together now, but a few, usually fellow supes like himself, stood out. Bishop, Suren, Henry, Rebecca. There were those whom he had known for less time, but still featured in his dreams; Bernie, Cara, Celine. His own Suzanna and Isaac had loved him unconditionally and selflessly, but ever since then it had been a long string of those whom he had loved and loved desperately, but had bled and suffered for as they dragged him down either intentionally or through no fault of their own.

Not until Josh had Aidan been simply and purely loved, had his own well-being put above everything else. Aidan had grown used to it; Bishop's passive-aggression, Henry's dishonesty, Suren's and Rebecca's insurmountable temptations. Aidan had never been able to relax with any of them, not really, either for fear that they would turn on him or because he knew that, at the end of the day, he was the only thing holding them together, their rock in the storm and the strong one in the relationship, though it had been beyond terrifying to realize that. Him, the strong one? Most days Aidan felt anything but.

Yet, that was how it had always been, and how he had truly thought it would always be. Even with Kat he had been setting himself up for that pattern again—protect her, conceal from her, try to walk the line between his human and his supernatural life and simply pray she wouldn't get caught in the crossfire like the rest of his human companions.

It was different with Josh. Josh, who bled for him, who risked his life for him over and over, who cared for him and provided him with everything he could, not as an offering, not as a suggestion, but as a _demand. _Josh, who was brave enough to shove his bleeding arm in front of a starving vampire, but who fumbled over his words when asking Aidan to take off his shirt for mark measuring the next day. The man who'd gone from the kicked-around kid in the knit cap and brown vest to someone he barely recognized. Someone who could make him laugh, drive him crazy, get him to tell the truth when he was convinced he'd rather take it to the grave, and stick around to pick up the pieces when the other people he loved left him ruined and half-destroyed. Someone who lapsed into medieval speak when picking up chicks and thought feverfew was a band.

Josh was his—Aidan didn't have a word for it any better than Josh had, when he'd said "You're my—" Josh was his…

And there it was, quite simply.

Josh was his. Full stop.

Aidan closed his eyes and laughed, unable to stop the sound that bubbled up within him. It was the least funny thing in the world, but some days life was simply too ironic and mystifying to be anything but humorous. It seemed even two centuries in Aidan could still find the most creative, inventive ways to screw himself over.


	8. The walk

Nora tossed her head back and let out a sigh, rolling her neck to the side and letting her blond hair slide past her neck and fall across her shoulders. After a moment she opened her eyes, licked her lips and smiled. "One more."

"Coming right up," Sally said, refilling her small shot glass until it was brimming with cinnamon schnapps. Sally poured herself a small shot of butterscotch schnapps instead and lifted it to Nora in a toast.

"To becoming alcoholics," Sally suggested.

Nora made a face, but clinked her glass against Sally's. "Really? I don't think we're that bad. It's only been twice so far this month."

"The way things are going now?" Sally asked, taking her shot in one go and shivering with delight from the warm, sugary rush, "I'm actually totally fine with becoming a bit of an alchy. For a while."

Nora heavily-lidded her eyes and smiled at that, letting her eyes slip shut after a moment as she leaned her head sideways onto her shoulder the way she did when she was buzzing. Sally liked to see her this way—the other woman was so rarely able to unwind and relax. "You feeling good?" Nora asked her, her eyes still shut.

"I'm a total heavy-weight, so I'm gonna have to play catch-up with you a little," Sally noted, taking another swig from the butterscotch bottle to try to match Nora's feel-good level of tipsy.

"Get on it, then!" Nora playfully chastised, sitting upright and looking over at Sally again. "I don't want to be the only alchy here."

"So eager, all of the sudden!" Sally teased.

It was no secret that Josh and Nora had had an argument earlier that day. Sally had heard the unhappy, raised voices in her room down the hall and was certain Aidan, with his super vampire hearing, had gotten wind of it too. Or, he would probably have, if he was paying attention anymore. He seemed perpetually dazed and a little slow now, which she couldn't blame him for.

Nora had approached her later, during what Sally knew to be "feeding time" for the boys, and that was how they'd gotten into the alcohol cabinet at four in the afternoon on a weekday. Nora was already done with her hospital shift, Sally was unemployed as ever, and Josh had slipped away to be alone after leaving Aidan, apparently upset or angry about something. He'd cast the pair of them a look, lingered for just a moment at the sight of them drinking together at the kitchen table, and gave a small two-fingered wave before he shut himself away upstairs. Aidan hadn't been up from the basement yet, either.

"I want to go for a walk," Nora said decisively, getting up and looking around for her jacket. She found it crumpled up on a chair in the living room and went over to snag it. Sally paused for a moment, wondering what to do with her drink, and Sally waved her on. "Brown-bag it!" she said. "No one will care."

"Damn straight," Sally said, doing as she was told and capping the schnapps. A moment later Nora, Sally, and a very stereotypical crumpled-up grocery bag of liquor were walking down the front steps into the overcast autumn afternoon. Without a word they hung a right and started down the sidewalk, their feet carrying them in an undisclosed direction.

For a while everything was perfect. Sally took long, generous drags from her bottle, and the one time Nora asked for a sip the other woman almost spit it out. "Ugh!" she exclaimed, shivering. "Oh, that's _way _too sweet! How can you drink that?"

"Oh, like you should talk! Your beverage of choice is like willingly doing the cinnamon challenge over and over!"

Nora hadn't known what the "cinnamon challenge" was, and the girls spent a slow-progressing part of their walk looking at videos of people trying, and failing not to throw up after dining on spoonfuls of pure cinnamon. Their uproarious laughter was getting some dirty looks from denizens in nearby apartments and pointed sighs as people on the sidewalk weaved around them.

"Why would someone willingly put themselves through that?" Nora asked, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes as Sally pocketed her phone and finished off the last of her schnapps.

"For one, it's the internet. For another, you're pretty much doing the same thing!"

Sally tossed her empty bottle and bag in a public trash bin as Nora defended her choice of alcohol. They lapsed into a comfortable, buzzy silence as they walked, and Sally noted with deep satisfaction that she'd finally met her freaky new body's inebriation quota. The world swam pleasantly and her extremities felt warm and tingly.

"I just don't know how to deal with him, sometimes," Nora said, seemingly out of nowhere. Sally, though working a good buzz now, didn't even have to think to know who she was talking about. It was unfortunate that a very nice girl's night of drunken frolicking had turned into a discussion about boys, but Sally could hardly deny Nora this when she had so much on her plate.

"It's okay," she said, walking a little unsteadily so she was closer to Nora, and patting her shoulder. "None of us do."

"Aidan does," Nora replied without a beat. Sally paused before continuing, aware again that they were on dangerous ground here.

There was no denying that Aidan and Josh had their weird friendship down to an art, so it would ring false for Sally to try to tell Nora she was wrong. Instead she tried to minimize it, and waved her hand in the air. "Only sometimes. And plus, he's got a good few centuries more of experience with people."

It had been a really good point, but Sally's heart sank when Nora shook her head. "I'm not talking about 'people,' though. I'm talking about Josh." Sally opened her mouth to retort, but Nora put her hand up. "God, I'm sorry. I don't mean to unload on you like this. Or to be so negative. You're just trying to make me feel better, and I love you for it."

Sally's face twisted into an embarrassed, but very pleased smile at the hefty compliment and show of affection. "Don't worry about it. You need someone to talk to. We all do."

Nora gave her a small, sad smile and leaned her shoulder into Sally gently. Sally tried not to topple over, not because Nora had hit her too hard (she hadn't) but because her own feet didn't seem to want to keep her headed on a linear path. Nora, spotting this, chuckled and wrapped an arm around her shoulders while they walked. It was comfortable, natural and calm to sling her arm around the small of Nora's back and walk in sync with her down the sidewalk.

"How've you been?" Nora asked her. "I haven't seen Max around lately."

The mention of the mortician served to puncture a decent-sized hole in Sally's happy bubble, but she did her best to brush it off. "He's around, I'm sure. Just not… around me."

Nora picked up on it immediately and cringed. "Oh, Sally. I'm sorry, I didn't realize." After an uncomfortable pause, Nora ventured, "Do you… want to talk about what happened?"

Sally made a face and twisted a little, not quite a shrug. "I mean, it's no secret. Except, that's exactly it. We broke up because of secrets. Too many of 'em, I guess." Nora was frowning at the side of her face, which Sally could see from the corner of her eye, so she elaborated. "You know, the night with Liam? … Of course you know. Well, thing is, Max was sort of… with me, at the house, when Aidan and Josh got back." She could feel Nora stiffen up with horror beside her and rushed to reassure her. "Don't worry," she said, locking eyes with Nora and putting her free hand up. "He doesn't know anything. He thought maybe they were involved in a shoot-out. Only… _because _I told him Josh's and Aidan's secrets weren't mine to tell, he… I guess he's fed up now. I haven't heard from him since."

Nora closed her eyes and shook her head, and Sally hurried to shrug. "I can't blame him, honest to God. Lord knows that boy put up with more than enough crap from me."

"_No,_" Nora said with surprising vehemence. It took Sally completely off-guard when Nora stopped them, whirled Sally around to face her, and held her in place with a hard grip on both of her shoulders. "Absolutely not. You are amazing, okay?" At Sally's bewildered, taken aback look, Nora repeated herself again, emphasizing each syllable. "A-ma-zing. He shouldn't have gotten mad at you for protecting information your friends can't share. Especially not after you told him your own most carefully-guarded one. He—he doesn't deserve you." Nora dropped her arms from Sally's shoulders abruptly and turned away, shrugging hard. "Simple as that."

Sally was utterly at a loss for what to say. "Jeez, Nora," she said, trying to keep it light although she was flustered and deeply flattered, "Too bad you're engaged and neither of us is gay. That's gotta be the sweetest thing anyone ever said to me."

"Well, you deserve it," Nora said decisively. "You haven't been lucky, when it comes to significant others."

"Look who's talking!" Sally said, wanting to give Nora some credit here. "Though you lucked out with Josh. He adores you."

Sally had been hoping to get the girlish, heavy-lidded smile Nora sometimes wore when they spoke of Josh, that almost shy look. Instead Nora let out a soft sigh and let the word, "yeah," ride out on the end of it.

Sally studied her profile for a moment, letting her think for a time before she gave her a gentle nudge with her shoulder. "Still upset about Josh and Aidan and their epic bromance?" she teased lightly, though her eyebrows were knitted together with concern.

Nora gave her half a smile and shrugged. "It's almost refreshingly common a problem, isn't it? The fiance feeling threatened by her future husband's best friend. If only there wasn't this supernatural element to it, I could almost deal." She shook her head. "There's… so much to it. I don't want Josh to get hurt. I'm scared to death for Aidan. What if he never gets better?" She glanced up at Sally apologetically, but Sally just nodded. Aidan was a sore subject for all three of them, Josh and herself in particular, but she didn't want to avoid the topic like they could make it go away by not speaking of it. Aidan was in life-threatening danger, and that was all there was to it.

"I can understand why Josh feels the way he does," Sally said. "And I do think he knows himself well enough to be telling the truth when he says he needs to do this."

"I understand that, too," Nora said. "I'm glad he explained it to me that way—that he'd be hurt so much worse in the long run if he didn't keep doing what he's doing. I can certainly relate." She frowned harder and shook her head. "I just… I don't know what will happen if Aidan doesn't make it." Sally felt like she was on the edge of understanding Nora, but wasn't quite there, so she remained quiet and let her continue. "If he dies… I don't see how Josh will ever recover."

"He'll have us," Sally said, reaching out and giving Nora's arm a squeeze. "More importantly, and more specifically, he'll have you."

"He will," Nora affirmed. "Always. But I'm starting to realize, more and more, that… I won't be able to pick up the pieces after Aidan. They have something, the two of them, that Josh and I will never be able to achieve. I don't think I can repair the fallout of that kind of loss."

Sally frowned, shaking her head and picking her words carefully. "... You can't mean that you think Josh and Aidan are closer than you and Josh are."

"Can't I?" Nora asked, not challengingly, but more a simple, confused question.

"You're his future _wife. _I mean, I assume you and he have plans to make adorable possibly-werewolf possibly-not babies together, do the whole white picket fence thing."

Nora smiled sadly. "Always more of Josh's area of expertise, the whole homemaker thing, but… yeah. That's what he wants for us."

"What about what _you _want?"

"Don't get me wrong. I want it. I want to be happy with him—I want him to be mine." Sally knew there was a "but" coming, and sure enough: "But honest, Sally? I don't think he is."

It confused her on so many levels, but somewhere inside, on an uncomfortable level, what Nora was saying was ringing true. Still, she couldn't let her friend torture herself without going down swinging. "Josh loves you," Sally said, quietly.

"I know," Nora said, her voice full of feeling. She smiled, finally, that shy, girlish smile with her blonde eyelashes fluttering low over her eyes. "I will never, ever doubt that he loves me." Sally gave her a small smile, already knowing what was coming next. "I only… I just don't think he's _mine_. If that even makes sense."

Sally realized, with a pang, that even when there were no supernatural secrets between partners, any relationship was bound to be rife with difficulties. The autumn air snuck through her jacket, just a little colder than it had been before, and Sally pulled her coat tighter around her to try to block it out.


	9. The bad

_You're my person._

The thirteen letters and two marks of punctuation (because Josh counted the period, because who _didn't _count the period?) were haunting him. Thirteen—it even felt like a bad omen, a horrible mistake ready to come crashing down on his head like a swarm of shadowy bats. He'd only said "you're my—", which was only seven letters in total, but even that didn't seem to be lucky, in spite of the good connotations of the number. Or, maybe it _was _lucky, since Josh's tongue-tied ineptitude had stopped him from finishing that doomed sentence.

Josh had been about to tell Aidan that he was "his person."

"Fuck," Josh said, getting up out of bed and scrubbing his hands through his hair. He had different modes of freaking out, and this one was the tourettes-like swearing coupled with restlessness kind. He wasn't hyperventilating or sweating, but he couldn't stop reliving his idiocy right when he thought he could maybe, maybe let it go at last.

What made it bad, what made it so, so much worse, was how familiar those words were to him. Hadn't he used them on Nora just months ago—used them to _propose _to Nora, in fact? Josh felt sick just thinking about it. He was officially the worst fiance in the world, and the most confused, screwed-up guy in the universe.

Nothing helped. He'd tried to pour himself into the research on Aidan's condition, but that just reminded him of Aidan. He tried to sort some laundry for a load, but every time he lifted one of Nora's shirts or blouses he was hit with her scent. She still smelled so good, heavenly, but the scent was starting to close in on him, feeling accusing and thick. It was starting to make him feel sick.

Actually, he'd been starting to feel sick before that, even. Josh shook his head, mopped his clammy brow with the back of his hand, and made his way downstairs to the kitchen.

The fridge was missing the two chilled bottles of schnapps Sally had bought earlier in the day, and Josh spotted one sitting out on the kitchen table. He put it back in the fridge and reached for one of his lined-up troops of protein shakes, popping the tab and chugging it in one go. He gagged a little on the powdery, almost-chocolate-but-not-quite taste and dumped the can before popping another open. He took his time on that one, moving sluggishly over to the living room and sitting down hard on the couch.

Josh was almost disappointed that his body was finally starting to punish him for the constant, steady blood loss. If nothing else he'd hoped the re-establishment of his unfortunate condition would give him a higher tolerance for such things. Aidan had once called it a "useless condition," and though that had been in jest, it seemed true now more than ever.

Perhaps putting eight vials of blood in tonight hadn't been wise. Josh couldn't help it, though—seeing how that one mark had actually gotten smaller had lit the fire under his ass. He'd told himself he was doing everything he could for Aidan, but actually, now that he knew what his blood could do, that wasn't true. He could do more. He could always do more.

There was a creaking sound and Josh froze before he realized what it was. Aidan's door was opening, and since Sally and Nora were out, it could only mean that Aidan was actually emerging from his lair from the first time in—Josh didn't even know when. He sat up a little straighter, trying to look casual and not sick, and by the time Aidan glanced around the living room from the top of the stairs and spotted him, Josh felt he was doing a fairly decent impression of "not sick, not traumatized and not freaking out."

"Hey," Aidan said, his voice a little raspy. Josh gave him an entirely too-manly half-nod and busied himself with drinking more of his nasty (now lukewarm) shake. Aidan frowned around the living room once more. "Girls out?"

"Yup," Josh said, resorting to monosyllabic answers.

Apparently trying to act unsuspicious was the most suspicious thing Josh could do. Aidan frowned at him and studied him, and Josh gave him a sidelong frown but was helpless to hide from Aidan's shrewd gaze. The vampire walked over to him, sat on the coffee table across from him, and plucked the protein shake out of his hand.

"Really?" he asked Josh, swishing the contents around a little and quirking his nostril up. Apparently this stuff was noxious to all species. "Trying to bulk up for the Warrior Dash?"

"Hah," Josh said, the word tense and strained. "Funny."

"Uh-huh," Aidan said, drawing out the phrase slowly. "You look unwell. Care to share?"

"Not… really," Josh said, unable to think of any excuse that wasn't done to death or painfully transparent. He could only hope Aidan would chalk it up to their emotional moment of brotherly love earlier and let it go.

"Headache?" Aidan asked, and Josh jumped on that excuse. Plus, it was true.

"Yeah, sorta."

"Probably tired too, huh."

"You bet," Josh added, smirking. "Though I'm not one to complain here… being… plague-less… and all."

Aidan ignored his last comment, continuing to make seemingly inane small talk. "I remember that sort of tired. Makes you a little dizzy and crampy, yeah? And stupid as it sounds, makes it harder to go to sleep at night."

"Counterintuitive, yeah," Josh agreed, a second before he realized what Aidan had been doing. "Aidan—" he started, but it was too late.

"So, Josh… headaches, cramps, dizziness, fatigue, insomnia… you're almost as pale as me and I bet climbing the stairs winds you? When were you going to tell me you're displaying just about all the signs of anemia?"

Josh did not appreciate being lulled into a false sense of security, and appreciated being trapped in a conversational spike pit even less. "I'm not _anemic_, Aidan, I'm healthier than I've ever been in my life."

"Doesn't matter. Steadily losing blood will get to even the most health-conscious athletes."

Josh could scarcely believe they were really having this conversation right now. "Seriously, Aidan?" he asked, weariness leaking into his voice. "Whatever health problems of mine that you've cooked up in your head are the least of our collective concerns."

"I beg to differ," Aidan said, his voice terse, and Josh stood, just to have something to do.

"This is getting stupid. This is beyond stupid, we arrived at that station five stops ago. We're now officially in delusional land."

"Delusional? How is it delusional for me to want you to stop self-destructing?"

"Self—Aidan, are you even listening to what you're saying? I knew you could be melodramatic, but what the hell are you even talking about right now?"

Aidan glared at him, opening his mouth to retaliate, but then he tossed his hands up in the air and also stood, stalking around the table to stand closer to the disused fireplace. "No, Josh. You know what? Just no."

"What do you _mean, _no?"

"I mean _no. _I'm not taking another drop from you. It's ridiculous. I thought at the _very least _you would be honest with me about your body—hell, you know _everything _that's going on with mine—and if you can't maintain enough common sense and distance here to keep yourself from passing out from blood loss, how am I supposed to trust you?"

"You're—you're so full of shit, Aidan. Do we have to have this fight _every single time _I feed you? We know how this goes, already! You say I'm being stupid, or I'm in denial, or it's not healthy for me. I remind you like I've reminded you _over and over again _that this is the _only thing _keeping me happy, keeping me from _losing my goddamn mind over you. _You get that look on your face like I'm telling you that I care about you for the first time—that look, right fucking there—like it's some kind of _surprise, _then you say 'okay' or some shit and we're good for a few days until we do _this _again!"

There was a protracted, heavy silence between them as Josh finished up his long-winded rant. Aidan's expression was completely beyond him to understand—the vampire looked perfectly torn between anger and some sort of deeply touched, borderline uncomfortable expression. Josh cleared his throat and tried to smooth over the bumpy terrain.

"So, I'm still feeding you."

"Josh—" Aidan began, cutting himself off and shaking his head. "No. You know this isn't going to have a happy ending. I'm done."

Josh stared at him like he was speaking Swahili. "You're shitting me. I literally just—did you not hear a _word _I just _said_?" he asked, desperation and bone-deep exasperation coloring his last word.

When Aidan said nothing, still giving him that same, unchanged look, Josh stalked to the fridge and threw the door open, almost knocking all the condiments in the door rack to the ground. They slid forward and slammed into the shallow plastic shelf-guard, knocking hard against one another. "If you're going to be such a stubborn douche about it, here." He jabbed his finger into the fridge and pointed at the beer case. "At least don't let that go to waste. Even you can't think of some excuse to not take blood that's already there for you."

"You—what are you _talking about, Josh_?"

"_This!_" Josh shouted, yanking the case of beer out and slamming it down on the table. The little glass vials in their plastic stands clinked harshly against one another and Aidan's eyes widened. Of course he would know that sound anywhere. "It's a stock! So now you know where it is, and you can do whatever you want with it."

"You—" Aidan's lips pressed into a hard line and he gave Josh a look that could kill. Josh stared straight back at him, not impressed. "You've been bleeding yourself _more? _Even after we agreed on four tubes per feeding? How much is even—" Aidan strode forward to the table and Josh side-stepped to let him look for himself, feeling almost vindictively satisfied. Aidan's mouth dropped open when he saw the dozens of glass tubes lined neatly up inside. "Josh!"

"Guess I'm tougher than you think, huh," Josh said, the last word coming out as a scoff. "Tough enough to only feel a little out of sorts after managing this. You never give me enough credit, here. I'm not _you, _Aidan—I'm not centuries old and you could snap me in half all but one day out of each month. But I'm not a child. I'm not weak. I'm a grown-ass man and I make my own goddamn decisions, and that," he said, jabbing his finger at the case, "is one of them."

Aidan seemed at a complete loss for words. Josh couldn't tell if he was still furious, starting to feel guilty or stupid, or if he was swimming somewhere between those two zones. Whatever he was going to say was cut off as the door opened, Nora and Sally poking their heads into the foyer. Aidan and Josh spun to face them and both women froze where they were, looking wary.

"Everything…?" Sally began after a fractured pause.

Aidan said "no" at the same time Josh said "yes." The two men exchanged a fierce look and Josh moved to stick the case of "beer" back in the fridge.

"Nora," he called over his shoulder, his voice curt. "I've been putting more blood aside for Aidan, it's in the fridge. You can yell at me later. I'll be upstairs."

Josh had to turn back around to get to the stairwell, and saw Nora's mouth drop open at his admission as he did so. He determinedly didn't look anyone in the face as he took the stairs three at a time, feeling the damned thumping of his blood in his veins and a buzzing feeling in his head—he hated the idea with every fiber of his being, but Aidan was right. Climbing the stairs made him feel out of breath.

* * *

Nora looked absolutely terrified for her fiance, and Aidan wanted to break the table in half, punch Josh in the face, and jump off a cliff at the same time. Sally had a "why are mommy and daddy fighting and can I make a joke to make it better?" face on and Aidan found himself silently cursing his roommate as he explained the situation in a little more detail to the women.

"So he…" Nora said, leaning over the biggest shelf in the fridge and doing a quick count of the vials, "you said he seemed anemic?"

"Yes," Aidan said, rubbing his hands over his face. "I'm sorry, Nora. He seemed fine until just now. He hid it well, I guess."

"Not your fault," Nora said quietly, closing the door and rubbing her hands across her arms. Aidan could smell the sweet scent of butterscotch and a spicier scent from Nora, but whatever pleasant buzz the women had achieved was gone in the stark reality of what they'd come home to. "I'm gonna talk to him," Nora said softly, going over to head up the stairs. Aidan knew she wouldn't yell at him. She was beyond yelling, now. That was only her first line of defense, her temper usually rising up to protect her vulnerable parts when the real emotion was fear or hurt. He watched her go, twisting with guilt for a million reasons, then turned to Sally.

"Sorry."

"Hey," Sally said, putting her hands up. The edges of her jacket were bunched up around her hands and only her fingertips showed. She seemed so young like that. "No worries. I'm just concerned about you guys."

"We're fine," Aidan intoned flatly, and Sally gave him a wan smile.

"Clearly not." She nodded her head to the basement doorway. "Can we…?"

Aidan paused, trying to think of an adequate excuse to dodge this talk, but deflated when he could think of nothing. "Yeah, sure," he finally said, opening the door and letting her proceed him down the stairs.

When they were situated and the door firmly shut behind them, Sally turned to face him, crossing her arms but not looking angry. "So… lovers spat?" she started.

Aidan rolled his eyes hard. "Don't call it that."

"Okay," Sally said, and Aidan hated the way she sounded, like she was trying very, very hard not to offend him.

"It'll be fine," Aidan assured her.

"Fine as in… Josh storming off upstairs and you refusing to feed from him anymore…?" Sally asked, shrugging first one shoulder, then the other.

Aidan opened his mouth to reply, but couldn't think of anything to say. "Honestly. Josh and I are just—we'll be fine. I'm more worried about how Nora's handling him up there." Something occurred to him and he winced. "I'm sorry. We sort of wrecked your night."

"Oh… not really," Sally said, picking at a thread in her sweater. "I mean to say… it wasn't all that… great to begin with."

Now it was Aidan's turn to be worried. "Care to elaborate?"

"Nora's sort of… having thoughts… about her relationship with Josh." An iceberg seemed to form in Aidan's stomach at her words, but he knew better than to bombard her with questions as that would cause her to falter for words. He remained silent, though it was one of the hardest things he'd done in recent memory. "I mean, she still loves him, not like that," Sally hurried to elaborate, putting her hands up. "And she knows he loves her. Just…" Sally paused and ran a hand through her hair, a little hard. Aidan watched, worried that he'd see her pulling the hair away from the weaker parts of her scalp, but she seemed to be in pretty good shape today.

She paused for such a long time Aidan wasn't able to stop himself from prompting her. "Just…?"

"Just… she's sort of, I guess, threatened by this thing you and Josh have?" she worded it like a question, then squeezed her eyes shut like she already hated her phraseology. "Not threatened. It's not that—that aggressive a thing. More like… resigned? Sad, worried? That maybe she's not… uh."

Aidan's face, sometime during her fumbling explanation, had shifted into severe, concerned dread. Sally studied him and he tried to smooth the look out. "She… thinks that somehow our… friendship… will interfere with them?"

"Uh… not directly? Dammit, I didn't even really understand it when she was explaining it to me," Sally said, giving up and flopping her arms down at her sides.

"Why don't you just try to remember what she said verbatim," Aidan suggested. "Don't try to edit or censor anything because you don't want to upset me."

Sally gave him a worried look out of the corner of her eye, but nodded. "Okay. Well, what stuck out during our talk was that Nora said… she said she doesn't think Josh is… 'hers.'"

Sally had put air quotes up around the word, but it felt like the word was the last nail in Aidan's coffin. He wondered if he actually went even more pale than normal, and he must have had some sort of physical change come over him, because Sally's eyes widened at that.

"Uh… you seem like you know what that means, which is… more than I can boast. Is this some kind of supernatural club card thing I failed to get in the mail?"

Aidan couldn't bring himself to laugh or even quirk a smile. "It's… I guess. It's more the territory of vampires and werewolves. I'm surprised Nora would even use that term, since she's… new, relatively. Maybe one of the purebreds used it around her…" Aidan shook his head and rubbed his face, letting out a sigh as he dug his fingers into his forehead. "Our kind is really… possessive? I guess? And wolves, they mate for life in almost all situations. Vampires can have more than one partner, but when they stake a claim to someone, it's… pretty serious. It tells all other vampires to back off or face the consequences. If Nora… if she really thinks there's some sort of disconnect here, between her and Josh, that they aren't completely bonded, and it has something to do with me…"

"But…" Sally said, slowly, "I mean, that's not the case, right? I mean, _you _don't think that, do you?"

Aidan's silence said it all.

"You—oh." Sally's eyes widened and Aidan closed his, letting out a sigh. "Oh, wow. Okay."

"Just… don't—"

"Get involved? Nooo worries," Sally said, and Aidan could imagine her making some sort of swishing gesture, maybe to zip her lip or slash her throat. "Wouldn't dream of it. Staying away from this situation for sure."

"Thanks," Aidan intoned flatly, and a moment later he felt her slight weight on the bed beside him. She bumped his shoulder with hers and he managed to give her a miserable side-glance.

"Hey," she said, putting her arms out for a hug. Aidan was surprised she'd still want one after this particularly messed up revelation. Aidan wasn't about to refuse a show of comfort, though, and scooted closer so Sally could throw her arms around his shoulders and rest her head on his arm. "It's okay."

Aidan chuckled. "You really think so, or are you just saying that?"

Sally gave him a wan, helpless smile. "I'm sort of just saying it, but at the same time, I _do _believe it, deep down. This is going to get… really weird and really confusing. And messy. But when push comes to shove, you know what? We're going to be fine. We're a family."

"Wish I had your faith in us," Aidan said with a soft chuckle. "Though I agree with the first part of your sentiment. This is going to get bad before it gets better."

"Mr. Optimistic," Sally joked, nudging him with her body again.

"I prefer Mr. Realistic."

"All pessimists do," Sally remarked sagely.


	10. The snap

_Happy Valentine's Day, guys. I wanted to get this up before midnight my time, and I made it! Thanks for sticking with me throughout this story. Right now we're looking at a total of 14 chapters and a possible epilogue, so it isn't over yet!_

* * *

Aidan was not one for meditation, but staring at the dark lids of his closed eyes eventually gave way to some semblance of peace. He could not imagine death, that stark, blank nothingness that awaited, and he knew his months underground were only a pale shadow of what was to come. Even then, during his literal and figurative darkest days, he had had Sally and Josh, in a manner of speaking, to keep him company. Their light quips and at times, inappropriate comments had kept him going, even though there were some days Aidan still felt like he had a few screws loose upstairs, the pieces not quite meshing together anymore. They had been there for him, two bright spots in the endless night, and he would not have them, or anything even close to them, where he was going.

Josh was angry at him, a persistent, simmering buzz that had lasted the course of a long, uncomfortable week. He came down twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, to leave the pre-packaged blood vials for Aidan on his table. He had stopped measuring him because Aidan had stopped moving to make it easy. The first day of Aidan's stillness Josh had let him be, asking him only twice to take off his shirt so he could analyze the marks before he seemed to realize Aidan was having none of it. The second day Josh tried to manhandle him into a sitting position, which he managed, and even got his shirt off with a lot of grunting and swearing. Josh was strong and Aidan wasn't all that heavy, all things considered, but it was not easy for someone of human strength to manipulate what was essentially a beanbag of unmoving flesh. Josh had gotten his measurements that day and left victorious, if a little sweaty and dishevelled. He'd smelled divine, his blood thundering under his skin.

The third day Josh yelled at him, refusing to manipulate Aidan bodily into any sort of position, demanding answers he already had. Aidan just looked at him, somewhere between sad and frustrated, but mostly just tired. He was so overwhelmingly tired these days.

After that day Josh had stopped trying to measure him, and just slipped in, put the blood down, and slipped out. It was what Aidan had wanted; less contact, less complication. He wanted Josh to start to find his constant, dogged stubbornness annoying, maybe think him selfish for refusing to speak. In a perfect world Josh would come to resent him before he died, but he knew he couldn't hope for that much. Josh was mad, but he was mad because he loved him.

And Aidan was acting this way because he loved _him._

He didn't expect Josh to understand, and explaining it would have defeated the purpose. So Aidan laid there, only getting up to move around every so often, and only when he was sure Josh wasn't going to come down. He needn't have bothered being paranoid, though. Josh stuck to his routine, his wordless twice-a-day visits, and Aidan stuck to his. It was better this way.

It was also sheer, unbridled misery.

Aidan supposed it wasn't much of a shock that his "Josh-shadow" appeared to him after the fifth day. He was often visited by apparitions, dead or alive, a little side-effect of being alive for so long and maybe more than a little bit insane. Josh-shadow was a lot like the real Josh, only a little preferable right now, since the shadow wasn't mad at him.

It was pretty critical and judgmental though, but that wasn't so surprising, considering it was Josh.

"So…" Josh-shadow said, motioning with his hands like he was prompting Aidan to fill in a blank. "You're… dying, and you're really going to spend your last few days like this. Pouting, essentially."

Aidan didn't answer Josh-shadow. If he got into the habit of talking to fake Joshes it would be even harder to keep ignoring the real one.

"You know you're acting like a kid, right? An actual, literal child."

Aidan let out a sigh at that one, but it turned out to be a mistake to give Josh-shadow even the slightest hint of attention. He took it as validation and barrelled on.

"I'm—the real me, that is—I'm gonna be down here in about…" Josh-shadow checked his watch, which seemed like a ludicrous gesture to Aidan. He was a figment of his imagination. How was he supposed to tell time? "Half an hour. You don't have to _be _this way, you know."

Aidan stared at the corner of the room, but Josh-shadow moved into his line of sight, brow furrowed, giving Aidan the serious frown he knew so well. Incensed, Aidan shifted his gaze to a different part of the room.

"I know you're feeling weird. I'm—real me—probably feeling weird too. But, hey." Josh-shadow moved into Aidan's line of sight again, and Aidan looked away. He could play this game all day. Josh-shadow sighed and gave up. "Look at it this way. You've got what, a few more weeks in you, best-case scenario? Josh and Nora, hopefully, have their whole lives ahead of them. You should really do what makes you happy _now, _while you have the chance." Aidan rolled his eyes, but Josh shook his head vehemently. "No, listen! I don't mean to be a selfish douche. I mean, they _love _you. All of them, even Nora. Even if this is sort of uncomfortable, or weird, it's only for a while. _You're _only for a while. They won't hold this against you, especially not after you're in the ground. Figuratively speaking."

Aidan finally looked over at his very tenacious figment and gave him a long, withering stare. Josh crossed his arms and stared back. "You know it's true."

For the briefest of moments, Aidan was tempted to talk to Josh-shadow, as he had done many times with Bishop, with Josh and Sally while he was underground (and for a while after that, too) and with other various apparitions. Still, if he had only a few weeks left, he might as well keep up his streak of breaking the bad habit of talking to himself like a psycho. Aidan averted his eyes again and Josh-shadow sighed.

"Sally and Nora already know. I bet you anything other-me knows too. You guys aren't fooling anyone." There was the sound of someone moving upstairs—Aidan didn't know why he referred to it as "someone," he'd know Josh's shuffling, hesitant footsteps anywhere—and Josh-shadow perked up at the sound too. "Here I come, little early today. So, no more of…" he gestured broadly to Aidan, head to toe. "This, okay? Seriously. I will not leave you alone about this."

With that, Aidan's apparition of his roommate vanished, and his real roommate's footsteps could be heard coming down the stairs. Aidan sighed and settled back on the bed, in the precise position he was always in, and waited.

Josh pushed the door open almost soundlessly, the doorknob in one hand and the tray of glass tubes in the other. He glanced over at Aidan as he entered—he always did, quickly, like he didn't want to but couldn't help it. Aidan stared back, not bothering to hide the fact that he was looking. Josh pressed his mouth into a hard, thin line for a moment, then walked over to the table and set the stand of vials down. Aidan was expecting him to turn and retreat, like usual, but Josh remained where he was, staring either at the blood tubes or at nothing, lost in thought and looking through the world. Aidan wasn't all that surprised when he finally spoke.

"Thank you," Josh said glumly, and for a second Aidan's poker face broke and he frowned. Josh wasn't looking, though, so Aidan was able to make a recovery. "For not just… chucking the blood, or anything. First few days I thought you might be, but I know that you're keeping up with your feeding."

Aidan had nothing to say to that, vow of silence or no. He didn't know how Josh knew so positively that Aidan was still taking the blood, but it didn't really matter.

"I feel good, if it makes even the slightest dent in how you feel. Been eating a ton, keeping up with the shakes, drinking my weight in water. My new hobby is peeing." It took Aidan a bit of resolve not to smirk at that. "I'm running out of vacation time, so it'll be back to the hospital sooner than later. You've got enough stocks of these," he paused and tinked his finger gently against one of the glass tubes, "to last you another few days."

Aidan's first impulse was to nod to show he understood, but he couldn't bring himself to "break character" and engage with Josh. This was the most the other man had said to him since yelling at him many days ago, and the temptation to just _talk back _was overwhelming. _Better this way, _Aidan reminded himself, gritting his teeth.

"I'd still like to measure you," Josh said with a sigh. "But I understand why you don't want that. You're not wrong," he said, turning slightly away from the table, which was what he had been talking to this whole time, and showing Aidan part of his tired profile. "Just… you're not right, either. If that makes sense."

It did and didn't, another paradox. That was simply what Josh was to him these days. A werewolf, his friend. Infuriating, calming. Supportive, challenging. The best and worst thing about life right now.

"Well," Josh said, shrugging slowly. "That's it, I guess. Just wanted to… I don't even know. Just wanted to talk to you, talk _at _you, even if you don't want to hear it. Guess I'm being selfish in that way. Sorry." He finally looked over at Aidan and the two of them met eyes, unspoken things heavy and dense in the air between them. It felt like the charged, thick atmosphere right before lightning struck, almost solid against his skin.

Then Josh cleared his throat and looked down, disappointment clear in the briefest of flashes on his face as he made for the door. "Just—I'm not mad, okay? I just wanted you to know. I _love _you, Aidan. I just want you to be happy at this point."

Aidan knew how he'd meant it, the simple, pure, uncomplicated, labelless love that they had always shared, before something else had crept in there and mucked it all up. He knew instinctively because of how much he'd punched the word _love, _how he'd reported it with zero discomfort, zero shame, zero uncertainty. Aidan knew because he felt the exact same way.

And it was just too bad that there was more, tangles and heaps of more, deep, winding roots of more, lightning strikes and blazing fires of _more. _It was too bad, it made everything so much more complicated, but Aidan could not be bothered to give a flying fuck anymore. He crossed the room to Josh in less than a second and was rewarded with a look that was devoid of any surprise, absent of fear, Josh's brown eyes softening in a way that almost seemed to say _finally _as he turned to meet him halfway.

Aidan crashed his mouth into Josh's and they clutched together in a hard, frantic tangle, pressed together suddenly from shoulder to hip. Aidan shoved Josh backwards and there was a thud as their bodies slammed into the table. The blood vials tipped over but it didn't sound like they'd broken.

Every second that passed Aidan expected Josh to push him away, come to his senses and discover he didn't actually want this, want him. Instead Josh raked his fingers into Aidan's hair, pulling them hard together, breaking the kiss only to breathe, hot and hard panting breaths, against him. Aidan felt a growl rising in him, low and unstoppable, and Josh muttered, "fuck," and pushed his face against the side of Aidan's jaw, his intent cut off by some sort of misfiring connections in his brain. A moment later Josh seemed to come to himself and finished the gesture, mouthing and nipping at Aidan's skin before moving down to the hypersensitive skin of the vampire's neck.

He couldn't know it was a particularly erogenous zone for his kind—Aidan had never told him, and who else would he have found out from? Aidan rolled his eyes back and let out an animal sound that came from somewhere deep inside him he didn't even know he had anymore. When had someone last made him feel this way?

"Aidan—" Josh gasped out near his ear, and Aidan had a momentary, terrified moment of thinking he was going to back out. Then Josh's hands travelled down his body, grasping at the beltloops of his pants, and Aidan felt like dying when he muttered, "please."

_I can't, _Aidan thought, even as he yanked Josh hard against him and threw the pair of them at the bed. The sentiment was alien to him, the true meaning unknown as he tore Josh's shirt off over his head, interrupting his roommate's own impatient ripping at his own button-down. A few unlucky buttons caught on Josh's heightened strength and sang across the room, skittering for cover under the furniture. _I can't, I could never. _

Aidan lowered himself down over Josh's hot, impossibly hot skin, burning against his as if with fever. As he bit down on the smooth, hard planes of his body, he realized with a start that his fangs were sheathed. This wasn't about blood-lust, and feeding was the last thing on his mind though Josh's scent was heavenly and distracting. This wasn't about being a vampire, or being about to die, or about Aidan at all. This was about Josh, and Aidan could feel himself getting lost already, sinking down into the one person who had always, would always be there.

_I can't._

And as Josh yanked him closer with strong legs wrapped around Aidan's waist, pulling him back up for another demanding, hungry kiss, Aidan finally got the rest of the memo from his addled, love-drunk brain.

_I can't say no. Not to you._

There would be consequences. People would get hurt.

And Josh whispered his name again, a broken thing in two parts, just syllables breathed out between movement, and Aidan didn't care. His name had never sounded so good, an affirmation that Josh knew it was him, that he wanted him, so much that it was his name Aidan was eliciting now with every touch, every taste. No bender could ever compare to this. If the end was around the corner, Aidan was alright with that, knowing that it had been leading up to now.

_I could never say no._


	11. The talk

Nora was waiting for Josh when he pushed the door to their bedroom open two hours later. These days it was difficult to tell what was womens intuition and what was her wolf sense—especially on days like today, when the full moon was so close, it could be a mix of both. Regardless of how she knew, she knew that Josh was miserable, frightened, wracked with self-loathing, and had bad news for her.

Her heart was beating almost as fast as his. She could hear it, practically, though it was also like a feeling, the thrumming vibration of sound that was not sound, traveling to her on the air between them. Josh met her eyes, blinked like he'd just been splashed with water, as if her gaze was something that hurt him. Such powerful, deep shame. She'd seen it in him countless times, and while sometimes it was an issue he'd blown out of proportion, she somehow knew this time it wasn't that.

Unable to do anything else but march towards the gallows, Nora patted the bed beside her. Josh, equally helpless to stop their trajectory, took up her invitation and sat.

For a long moment they were quiet.

She let him make the first move, knowing he needed it. He looked up from his lap, finally, his eyes holding that heartbreaking expression of deep, pervasive sadness that she'd caught a glimpse of years ago in the hospital while he was miserable over offending her with terrible pickup lines.

More out of fear than affection, Nora surged forward to kiss him. If the gesture had been born from the panic of possibly losing him, what followed was her last hopes hitting rock bottom, dragged down into the ocean with concrete feet.

She could taste Aidan on him, without knowing how she knew that was what it was. Josh knew that she knew in a moment, and then his face crumpled.

"Nora…" he whispered out, harsh and agonized in a way she'd never heard before. "I… I'm so sorry. I love you."

"I know," she said, gently. "I believe you."

Josh scarcely seemed to hear her. "We… we talked. We know it's you and me, we're the ones who are… we're _supposed_ to be together, Nora. I'm so sorry."

It would be so difficult to navigate these waters, walk the tightrope to preserve her pride, keep her heart from completely shattering, prevent Josh from falling into a wreck, and maybe save some semblance, some incarnation of their relationship. "Are you… are you sure, about that?"

Josh snapped his eyes back up to her, dread coloring the brown a darker color. "That I love you? I've never been more sure of anything in my life."

Again, she believed him. Even before she'd been scratched she'd almost been able to smell lies. She knew when someone was trying to pull a fast one on her, almost instinctively, and in rare cases even knew someone was going to lie before they did, through some invisible, miniscule tell. Sometimes she even knew when people were being deluded, dishonest without meaning it or even knowing it themselves. It was why it infuriated her so much when the truth was kept from her; she could _tell _when she was being lied to, and some days she almost wished she couldn't. There was nothing worse than being hurt by someone and not even having the option to remain blissfully ignorant about it.

Josh wasn't lying, now. He wasn't even lying in a deluded way, trying to convince himself of something that wasn't true because he so desperately wanted it to be real. He did love her. He loved her more than life itself.

That was what made this so hard.

"I know, baby," Nora said, trying to keep her voice even. Josh's eyes became glassy at once; Nora so rarely used these sweet nothings with him, preferring to call him by his name. Josh had always been the lovey-dovey of the two of them. "I just… I think what you need…" she cleared her throat, and all it did was draw even more attention to the fact that she was emotionally compromised, "What we both need, is for you to really… think, for a while. About what's best here."

Josh, bless his heart, didn't interrupt frantically and let her finish her entire sentiment. "I don't need to think," Josh said, his voice barely audible. "You're going to be my wife. You're my family."

Nora felt like she was arguing against someone trying to offer her food after weeks of starvation. All her excuses, all the cues and clues that had been leading up and pointing to this for so long, none of them seemed good enough, and she could feel her will crumbling. "Just… just think, Josh," she said again, her tone bordering far too close to pleading for her liking.

"I can't lose you," Josh whispered, reaching for her but stopping himself, as if afraid he no longer had the right to do so.

She completed the gesture, holding his hand and giving it a hard, firm squeeze. "You won't. Not ever, not really. I'm not—" she took a deep breath and let it out in a slow, shuddering stream, knowing how much of a wreck she looked like but unable to prevent it. The alternative was to completely break down. "I'm not going anywhere, sweetheart. You're too important to me for that."

It was Josh who lost his battle first. He squeezed her hand back, hard, no worries of hurting her or overstepping boundaries or being too rough. It was almost nice, and she wished it had been happening under different circumstances. She squeezed him back to reassure him, though she scarcely knew what she was trying to convey. _You can hold on tight? I'm not going anywhere? You can't break me? I'm stronger than I look? _It was all true.

"I'm not…" Nora said, having to pause again to take another deep, slow breath. "I'm not… trying to make you feel worse. I just… think maybe, this was a long time coming. This talk, tonight." Josh couldn't seem to make eye contact, but slowed his breathing consciously, listening to her explain. "You and he… Aidan," she said, forcing his name out. It didn't seem real enough if she didn't give voice to the other man, and she knew she needed to make this real, for Josh and for herself. "You've been through so much. And you've been together for so long. I know the same can be said for you and me—and Josh, believe me when I say I would be lost without you." Her words were kind, true, full of love and affection, but precisely for that reason she could feel each one shattering him more and more. She needed to make this fast. "But you have to ask yourself this, for all of us… who can you live without, between the two of us?"

Josh was jolted out of his deep breathing and gave her a stricken, mortified look. "I would rather die than lose you," he said at once.

Again, she believed him. In all things in life he was so unerringly, beautifully sincere. Even when he was trying to deceive he was doing it for what he hoped was the right reason, and he was so _terrible _at lying. She gave him a weak smile.

"I know. But if I died tomorrow—" Josh let out a soft, broken sound at that and she shushed him, shook her head. "If I did, Aidan would keep you going. He would pick up your pieces," she could feel her voice cracking but strove to go on, to at least get this out, "and it would take time, years, you would always miss me, but… you would be okay." Her voice disappeared on the last word, and she was hardly able to give any volume to the last part. "Because he'd still be there for you. You'd still have him."

Josh had closed his eyes halfway through her explanation, tears tracking down his cheeks. When he opened his eyes to look at her, it was with such grief, pain and loss that it was almost as if she _had_ died. Whatever she expected him to say, it wasn't what he said next.

"And when Aidan is gone, you'll be here."

It gave her pause, threw her off, but she sniffed hard and nodded. "You're right. Of course I will be. But… it's not the same, Josh. You'll realize it in time." She blinked heavily, her lashes thick with water, but she was a pro at not letting any tears shed. It was like a badge of honor for her—it didn't count as crying, she hadn't really lost control, if they stayed in her eyes. Even in front of Josh she played this game with herself, some sick leftover from her fucked up family, from Will. "There was just… one thing left, that was stopping Aidan from…"

She paused. Was she really going to say it? _Could _she say it? Could she take something that had been, easily, the most beautiful moment in her life, and use it to convince the man she loved to leave her?

She looked back at Josh, at the utter devastated adoration in his eyes, and knew.

"There was just one thing stopping Aidan from being your person, Josh. And it looks like that's gone, now."

It had hit home, as she knew it would. Josh closed his eyes and a tiny shudder ran through his frame. She could almost imagine that this was the undetectable sound of a heart breaking. It seemed like years passed before Josh spoke, and the whole time Nora was staring at him, drinking in his face like she would never see him again.

"Even if…" Josh said, hoarsely, "even if that's true… he's going to die." Nora's heart wrenched, if possible, more. It was the first time Josh had said those words aloud, like they were an inevitability instead of a possibility. "He knows it, we all know it. He's running out of time."

"All the more reason to stop denying this sooner than later," Nora said, feeling the exquisite pain starting to leak from her as she lost the ability to maintain such intense feeling at such a pinnacle. "Life's really too short, for us types."

Josh shook his head. "He talked, we talked about this, after… neither of us really thinks this is… right." Josh shook his head. "He said… that he's 'not the future,' for me. And he reminded me how much you and I love each other. And it's true, Nora. I can't—I can't lose you."

Nora shook her head. "Your listening skills need improvement," she said softly, exhausted but still feeling a kick of fondness for Josh and his ridiculous, bullheaded stubbornness. "I'm not going anywhere. If…" she closed her eyes and tried to claim her hand from Josh so she could press both palms into her forehead, but he kept his grip on her one hand. She pressed her free one over both eyes. "If you… want to. Later, we can… try to fix this. We can see what happens. I'll be here."

She knew it was a mistake to say the moment she said it. Josh shook his head, a motion she felt rather than saw, since she was still covering her eyes. Then he took his hand back, and she missed it at once.

"I can't do that to you," he said softly.

"I know," she said.

That was the last thing they said, simply sharing the silence together, no room in either of them or in the cramped space for any discomfort. All that hung heavy between them was one version of love dying, and another kind that had always been there rising to take its place and wrap them together.


	12. The one

_are you ok?_

Aidan's text had arrived on his phone over an hour ago, and Josh hadn't had the heart to answer it while Nora was still in the house. Though he knew she wouldn't begrudge him it, or probably even notice, it felt wrong somehow.

Even after she'd slipped quietly out the door to go to her shift at the hospital ten minutes ago, Josh had been awash in a kind of static ambivalence, unable to commit to a course of action. Adian must have heard Nora leave, but he didn't prompt Josh again. Josh sat on the edge of their bed, a range of thoughts, both practical and emotional, running through his head. He wondered where he'd sleep tonight—the sofa, probably. Nora would tell him it wasn't necessary, but it kind of really was.

_Good God, _Josh thought, a wave of surreal, detached wonder drifting over him, _I live in the same house with my possible-ex and my… _There was still no good word for what Aidan was to Josh. There probably never would be. It was a little laughable that, even in light of everything else spiralling out of control in their lives, this was on the forefront of his mind.

A push notification came through on Josh's phone and he glanced down at it. Breaking news about a weather warning. It served to remind him that he'd never answered Aidan, and he tapped out a reply. _i'm okay. nora went to work. be down in a sec._

There was no reply, but Josh knew he'd gotten the message. He took a few more moments to himself, trying to snap out of the dazed, pervasive shock he'd been in for hours now. Then he passed by the fridge where the vials stood in their neat little rows and went straight to the basement.

Aidan was at the bottom of the stairs waiting for him when he opened the door at the top of the flight. Josh locked eyes with him and knew the second he did that Aidan knew the gist of what had happened upstairs.

"Josh—" he started, in a tone identical to that of the shocked family friends offering their condolences fresh after a loss at the hospital. Josh just shook his head and pulled the door shut behind him, heading down the rest of the stairs. Sally wasn't likely to want to listen in on this and Nora had already gone to work, but Josh didn't want to have this talk with Aidan like this. Aidan vanished into the room and when Josh stepped down from the last stair he saw him sitting on the edge of the bed, head in hand.

"So she—she knows now," Josh said, wanting to get this over with. Aidan didn't reply, but looked up. Josh let out a breath and scrubbed his hands across his face. "We're—I don't even really know what to call it. Over? On a break, possibly forever?"

Silence hung heavy between them and Josh could almost hear Aidan beating himself up mentally. "I'm so sorry," he said, his voice barely carrying. "I never wanted this for you."

Josh shook his head, crossing over to sit beside him. "Don't. The talk she and I had… it wasn't a bad one. And absolutely everything she brought up was true."

Josh had known it, internally, as Nora and he had talked and he'd watched his plans for the future crumble around them. Something was so different about saying it out loud, though.

Aidan didn't speak, just looking at Josh with a sort of trepidation that he was unused to seeing on his face. So often Aidan was the collected, informed, decisive one of their group, armed with the benefits of age and experience that meant the others often turned to him for guidance when they were lost.

On the flipside, Josh would sooner get written up for sexual harassment than say the right thing to anyone he liked. Julia and Nora had been veritable miracles in his book, the women who had actually stuck around long enough to see if there was someone worthwhile under all his bumbling.

But Aidan wasn't Nora or Julia. He was Aidan.

Instead of trying to explain, or rely on words that so often failed him, Josh did what he felt. He slid his hand up Aidan's back to rest at the back of his neck and, only blinking for a moment in lingering bewilderment at how unusual the motion was, pulled him forward.

They both seemed to know it wasn't going to be a kiss. Aidan leaned into him and Josh leaned back, his forehead resting against Aidan's temple as his eyes slid shut. They remained like that, and for Josh's part the longer they stayed the more his muscles relaxed, the less the tension between them seemed to bother him. It was new, and like all new things it took getting used to, but he could already feel the muscle memory at work, the way the two of them fit together in silent, exhausted companionship, no longer tethered by doubts or protocol. They could just exist together, no second guessing and no obstacles, perceived or real, for as long as they had.

Josh felt prickling in his throat and swallowed it back. Not how they should be spending their time together. He cleared his throat and mumbled against Aidan's jaw, "You should eat."

"Probably," Aidan said back, his voice low and quiet. "Didn't see you bring anything down, though."

Josh smiled wanly and let his eyes slip shut again, shaking his head. "Not really gonna argue with me on live-feeding now, are you?"

He could feel Aidan smiling back. "I don't think so, no."

They repositioned on the bed, Aidan edging himself back against the headboard and Josh reaching to pull up his sleeve first, then changing his mind and tugging down the collar of his t-shirt instead. There wasn't really a precedent for this, and even though they'd just shared a very candid, affectionate moment with zero weirdness seconds before, Josh suddenly felt nervous at this prospect. Everything seemed so much more intense when Aidan was drinking from him. It was good, almost unbearably so sometimes, but it was also unpredictable.

A thought occurred to Josh as he simply tugged his shirt up and off. "Hey—" he started, but stopped short at the look Aidan had been giving him. His roommate's eyes had been fixed on his exposed skin, his gaze darkening with an unmistakable, but not blood-related hunger. Josh felt his throat go momentarily dry as Aidan blinked, a little abashed, and looked up at him. It took a second for Josh to get his brain back on track.

"Um… I wanted to, if you're okay with it, take a look at your marks again. Been about a week and all."

Josh thought he had gone through the worst of what this day had to offer him. Aidan's hesitation proved him wrong.

Josh could feel his heart beating in his ribs. "Is it… that bad?"

Aidan opened his mouth to reply and only managed a half-hearted sort of shrug. He pulled up the hem of his shirt and Josh felt his insides drop.

Criss-crossing over so much of Aidan's abdomen and torso were those dark, ever-growing lines. Josh had thought they'd been black before, but now he realized he was wrong. This new color, which was emerging from the center of some of the older marks, was truly black. The rest of it had been an ashy, dark gray.

There were parts where previously isolated spots had joined together into amorphous blobs of larger geometry, creating continental masses against the pale ocean of the rest of Aidan's skin. Josh felt like screaming and throwing up at the same time, but managed to contain it to heavy, slow breathing. It wasn't the visual display that was so upsetting but the reality of what it meant.

He managed to tear his eyes away from the sight and back up to Aidan's face. He was wearing a tired, small smile, and gave him a shrug. "I'd like to just not think about it for now. Just for today."

Josh couldn't bring himself to speak at first, so he just nodded. When he found his voice he said, "okay."

There was nothing like impending death to put something like awkwardness into stark, unwanted perspective. Josh could take his time getting used to the turn his friendship with Aidan had taken, but really, what was the point? He moved closer, crawling into what he hoped was a comfortable position on the bed, and Aidan yanked him into place with one arm.

Then their eyes met, and the residual weariness and melancholy fizzled out, replaced instead by an almost blank expression and the slight widening of his eyes. Josh knew that look by now. Aidan's eyes were dark and intense, the pupil flooding the iris. A flush had risen on Josh's neck and the way he was staring at him, as if devouring him already… even if he'd wanted to, Josh would never have stood a chance.

Josh grabbed the back of Aidan's head with one hand and pulled them together harshly, no thought given to gentleness or patience. A second later strong arms were around him and he was stabilized, Aidan tilting his head into the kiss with hungry fervor. He wasn't sure who pushed forward first, but soon their tongues were clashing together, twisting heat and grazing teeth. Aidan drew his tongue over one of his extended fangs and Josh followed suit, feeling for himself the smooth, hard edge and deadly point. Aidan shuddered so hard against him at that that Josh was peripherally worried he might nick him.

Aidan followed it up with a weak groan into his mouth and snaked his fingers against Josh's skull, grabbing a fistful of hair and he'd be damned if he'd been this hard this fast since high school. Josh's heart skipped and the feeling flooded straight down to his groin, his hips twitching forward as his denim began to feel like a trap. His toes started to tingle.

When they parted for air, panting already, Josh managed to focus on Aidan's face with great difficulty. Where just moments ago he'd been collected, slightly subdued and quiet, he looked utterly ruffled now. His eyes were shining, both in that full-dark way vampires had and in something that Josh could almost recognize as a kind of expression, an intensity he thought perhaps Aidan didn't normally show to others. Aidan yanked him closer, but there was space between their bodies and Josh did not approve. He shifted back, shakily, and since he had cut off their make-out session prematurely he was rewarded with a look of dazed, disappointed confusion a second before he lowered himself down in a different position, so he was between Aidan's legs. Aidan slid both hands up to either side of Josh's face, and Josh had one of his wrapped around Aidan's wrist, the other one resting on the tight skin over his ribs. The dark patches of skin felt a little rougher, a little different but the texture did nothing to calm the steady surge of heady, growing need under Josh's skin.

Aidan flipped them around somehow and lowered Josh down on his back on the bed, one hand on either side of him. Josh wasn't so keen on this position, and pushed up against Aidan's torso with his, wrapping his arms around the other and trying to distract him with a deep, heated kiss so he could flip them once more on the hazardously small bed. Aidan wouldn't have it, though, and laughed into the kiss as he shoved him back down. The sound and the feel of the chuckle was a rush of delight to Josh.

"Nope," Aidan said breathlessly, and all thoughts of retaliation were blown out of Josh's mind when Aidan leaned down and swirled his tongue over his nipple, letting out a hot breath across Josh's chest.

"Oh jesusfuck," Josh hissed, his hips snapping up involuntarily. "Oh fuck, wow."

Aidan chuckled again, seeming to find this amusing, and Josh struggled to be less vocal and save his pride. He lost that battle promptly when Aidan began to work at his jeans. Josh's heart was hammering as he struggled to stay still and focus on breathing, something a lot like fear thundering through his veins even while every cell was alight with the gut-punching clarity of how much he wanted this. Finally he was free, tenting his cotton boxers shamelessly. He felt sort of like he was watching someone else's body, someone else's life as Aidan deftly released him from his undergarments and smiled up Josh's body at him. Aidan did not fuck around at all, sliding his tongue up Josh in one steady movement before taking him suddenly into his mouth.

The heat was intense, amazing, and surprising for a vampire—Josh nearly bashed his head open on the headboard. He avoided bucking rudely into Aidan's throat only just, and clutched helplessly at the bedsheets. He realized he was cursing again only peripherally, unable to focus on anything else. Aidan was a damn god at this, roughly tracing a thick vein that ran from base to the tip while another hand slid down between his legs to rub at the place where his thigh turned into his hip. Josh wondered how many gods one could invoke in one sitting without being damned for all eternity.

Halfway through Aidan switched tactics, taking over with his hand while he ran the smooth part of his fangs gently across Josh's thigh. Josh tensed, partly because it tickled, partly from anticipation, and partly because he knew it would hurt a little. Aidan looked up at him and Josh felt his spine give up and turn to jelly. Aidan's eyes were half closed, his dark brows furrowed in slight concentration, and as he met Josh's eyes he smiled slightly, lapping very slowly and lightly at the inside of his thigh. Holy fucking mother of god—nothing in the whole entire world could possibly be hotter than that. Josh visibly twitched at the display as his own eyes hardened into something that was probably creeper-worthy intensity, and Aidan's smile grew for a second before he sank his fangs into the exposed skin.

It did hurt, stung pretty bad for a second, but then Josh rolled his head back against the bed and let out a sound that he could barely categorize as human. Aidan was coupling his feeding with his other hand still wrapped around him, pulling firmly up with each talented movement of his mouth, and it was over. Josh came with molten white behind his eyelids. Aidan's throat was working against his leg, swallowing down bursts of blood that came in time with each hot pulse behind his eyes, and Josh struggled to pull air into his lungs. Each breath felt like sandpaper.

He had barely recovered when he noticed that Aidan was staring at him with that hungry, predatory look, his eyes dark and intense and doing a great job eye-fucking him. One of his hands was wrapped firmly around himself now, pumping hard—Josh hadn't even noticed that he'd gotten his own pants off—and Josh made a sound of disapproval, wanting to assist. His wound was already glossed over with a light, mostly-red sheen of very thin protective skin, and Josh burst it open with his sudden movement as he surged forward, shoving Aidan backwards. He lacked the vampire's finesse, not having had two centuries to perfect his game, and they almost toppled off the bed. Josh bled freely down his thigh, red staining the sheets and splattering lightly against Aidan's lower body. Aidan jerked against him in messy spasms, Josh fumbling between them and finding him with his free hand. Aidan was already so close—he didn't know how he could tell, but he could, and the blood between them only served to push him closer to the edge. _Freak, _Josh thought fondly, reaching down to grasp a handful of AIdan's hair and crush their mouths together. Their teeth clacked and Josh did cut himself on one of Aidan's fangs this time, near the edge of his bottom lip. He tasted copper and the shudder of Aidan's breath as he came all over Josh's hand, which had barely had time to do anything of use.

Aidan's parted lips and exposed throat were asking for it. Josh moved forward on jelly limbs, capturing his lips again. Aidan's kiss was weak and breathless for the first few seconds, which allowed Josh to take brutal advantage of him. Aidan let it happen, eyes shut, body shivering against Josh's with a profound, vulnerable strength.

They remained like that, mostly breathing against one another with the occasional kiss, but the punch of post-coital, post-feeding weariness was starting to hover on the horizon. They were filthy, beyond so, but Josh couldn't bring himself to care for once. After a while Aidan pulled him down to lay beside him and the two of them found their way into an effortless tangle of limbs. Josh lagged behind Aidan by a few minutes as far as sleep went, but he found himself dropping off into a dreamless, blank slate soon enough.


	13. The ugly

Nora lived in a perpetual state of stark agitation these days. Josh spent all his time with Aidan, and conversely, Sally spent almost all her time with Nora. Nora told her to hang around with Aidan more, whose condition was steadily worsening, but the former ghost insisted on bringing up milk, cookies, soup, and a number of other treats to the room Nora had once shared with Josh. Nora couldn't bring herself to admit it out loud, but she was desperately grateful for the support and company. When she'd asked Sally if she would regret not getting to see Aidan more in these last few weeks, Sally just shook her head.

"What they really need is to just… be, right now. Be together and be themselves." She quirked her mouth in a soft, sad smile at Nora, as if saying "sorry" without the words. "I love Aidan to death, but I'll get my time with him. For now I just want to let them be alone."

"Yeah," Nora muttered, lacing her fingers together over the steam rolling off her mug of cocoa. "I know what you mean."

Her pain was only part heartache, for as each day dragged on it became painfully more obvious that Aidan wasn't going to pull through and make a miraculous, 180 degree recovery. Josh's magical blood or no, he was only getting worse.

"It's just…" Nora muttered, lying flat on her back in bed and staring at the ceiling, "I haven't even _seen _Aidan in what feels like days. I don't know what he even looks like anymore."

"Probably like the crypt keeper," Sally said in a flat tone, and Nora gave her a briefly horrified look before she pressed her lips into a hard line and fought back the horrendously inappropriate urge to laugh.

"I'm going to hell, I know," Sally said, giving her a guilty smile back. "What can I say? I joke about the shit that kills me."

"You're not going to hell," Nora said softly. "Besides, even if you did, you know you'd just be back in time for Christmas anyway."

"Damn straight," Sally muttered, biting off a hunk of her strangely underdone kalbi.

The night before the full moon made their house feel like a hospice. Nora and Sally roamed from room to room, setting mugs of tea down only to forget where they'd put them, reclaim and reheat them, and then forget them again. They were distracted and miserable, and about twenty minutes past four Sally threw her hands in the air, apparently fed up.

"Nope," she said.

Nora waited for her to go on, but Sally was bustling around in the kitchen, Nora figured to get something to eat. Her roommate was always hungry these days.

"... Nope?" she gently prompted.

"Nope," Sally agreed. "We are not going to sit around like this for one more day. Fuck it."

Nora frowned slightly, but, liking the general sound of this, put her cold cup of tea down and crossed her arms, watching as Sally moved around in the kitchen. She paused for a moment.

"You're… not going to try to cook, are you?" she asked, trying not to sound worried.

Apparently she'd failed. Sally made a face at her and shook her head. "No. Well, just popcorn. I can't fuck popcorn up."

When Josh poked his head up from the basement four minutes later, wrinkling his nose against the smell of carbon and smoke, it was clear Sally was wrong. "Did someone just fuck popcorn up?"

"Stop!" Sally groaned, her face in her hands as Nora tossed the ruined bag, waved her hands in the air to dispel the smoke, and unwrapped a new plastic package. "I'm just trying to have family time!"

Josh lifted his eyebrows. "Family time?" he asked, and while Sally explained in a huff that she wanted them to sit down together and watch _When Harry Met Sally _and eat popcorn (or pretend to eat popcorn, in Aidan's case), Josh's and Nora's eyes met.

It was one of the first times they'd seen each other in more than passing over the past many days, and both of them blinked in a flustered, confused way, looking aside for a second before looking back at each other once more, as if unsure if they were allowed. Josh had his puppy face on, one eyebrow slightly lower than the other, as if he were simultaneously puzzled and troubled. He looked tired, a little pale and drawn, but there was some other sort of change that had taken him. She wasn't sure if it was just lack of sleep, but he looked somehow calm, more peaceful and steady than she had ever seen him in his life. Besides the nervousness they shared between them, he seemed solid, sure.

She knew it was something Aidan brought out in him, and instead of causing her a pang of regret, the thought brought a smile to her face.

It brought the sun out on Josh's, too, and a moment later he smiled back at her, almost shy. She rolled her eyes at him and grinned a little more, leading the way, and he followed suit and chuckled, lowering his head and rubbing the back of his neck.

"_Hello?" _Sally demanded of them. "Is anyone listening to me? I said go get Aidan!"

* * *

"So… we're watching chick flicks why?" Josh asked, arms crossed over his flannel shirt while Sally screwed around with their ancient DVD player. The bluray had died recently in some supernatural disaster or other—Nora really couldn't remember which one these days—but it didn't matter since their copy of _When Harry Met Sally _was on DVD anyway. Nora flipped the empty plastic case over in her hands. It was one of those hastily-produced ones with no book jacket and a blank silver disc with the title embossed on it and nothing else.

"It's not a chick flick," Sally insisted, fiddling with the RCA cables. "It's about friendship."

"And it has Billy Crystal in it," Josh pointed out.

"And that's a bad thing?" Nora asked, putting the case down and lifting an eyebrow at him. "Come on, Josh. You practically _are _Billy Crystal."

Josh sputtered in protest at that, and for a beautiful moment of clarity life felt normal again.

"If it's all the same, can you be Meg Ryan?"

Aidan had emerged from the stairwell to Sally's and Josh's arguing about the similarities between Josh and Billy Crystal, and Nora's eyes raked over him as if searching for a depleting health bar like in video games. He was paler than ever, his cheekbones just a little more pronounced and dark circles under his eyes, but he was still his usual charming self, calm and understated, perpetually amused, quietly fond of them all.

Nora crossed over to him and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. When he gave her an uncertain look she shook her head. "We're all getting one, don't worry."

"Yup," Sally said, bounding over to Aidan and looping her arm into his to lead him to the couch. "It's not family movie night without popcorn and blankets to cuddle up in."

"Burned popcorn," Josh pointed out, and Sally chucked a kernel of Nora's more successful batch at his head.

Aidan settled himself down at one end of the couch and Nora moved automatically to the armchair, somehow wanting to let "the big three" share the couch space together. Sally and Josh remained standing, Josh out of seeming indecision about where to sit, and Sally because she had lost the remote control. Nora met Josh's eyes and nodded at the couch next to Aidan.

Sally turned around to see her friends spread out awkwardly across the room. "Goddammit," she grumbled, stalking over to Nora and yanking her up out of the armchair with surprising force for someone so small. "Nope." That was apparently Sally's word of the day, and she plopped Nora down on the other end of the couch, then grabbed Josh and shoved him at Aidan without any real regard for where or how he landed. Aidan caught Josh as they collided in a tumble of limbs and Sally leapt up to sit next to (almost on top of) Nora.

"In no version of reality do we all fit on this couch," Nora insisted, but Sally had punched the "play" button on the DVD player and the happy notes of Harry Connick Jr.'s rendition of "It Had to Be You" filled the apartment. Josh tried to get comfortable from Sally's other side while Aidan laughed at his struggles.

"Shhhh!" Sally insisted, cuddling up against Nora and draping her legs over Josh like he was territory ceded to her after a war.

* * *

Sally had fallen asleep somewhere around "I will never want that wagon wheel coffee table" and had been out cold against Nora's shoulder all the way through the "you're trapped under something heavy" voicemail message. Josh looked like he was half-asleep too, head propped up on his hand and elbow resting on Aidan's shoulder. Aidan was slumped low on the couch, one hand curled up under his chin, a small, wry smile on his face.

"Psst," Nora muttered under her breath, and Josh murmured a little in a half-asleep way. She'd meant it for Aidan, and he seemed to know. He shifted slightly to glance at her from behind Josh's head and over Sally's. "You suffering?" Nora mouthed.

"Immensely," Aidan mouthed back.

She had almost no warning.

One minute she was curled up on the couch with her roommates, listening to Billy Crystal trying to convince himself he wanted to spend New Year's Eve with Dick Clark and Mallomars. Then she was flat on her back, one arm pinned under the overturned couch, the wind knocked out of her and her hair plastered over her face. For a moment she couldn't hear anything. Then sound came rushing back and she became aware of Sally shouting, glass crunching underfoot.

Nora twisted herself back, wrenching her arm at a painful angle, trying to get it free. Sally shrieked again, louder, and Nora whipped in her direction, blinking furiously against dust in her eyes. A dark shape was hauling the girl to her feet, and then Nora saw red.

She might not be a wolf on the outside, but more and more, every day, she felt like one down to her marrow, in between her veins where it counted. Her body was slender, soft, not particularly athletic, not especially fast. Nora still slammed into the man holding Sally like she was a small blonde wrecking ball, knocking him off his feet and shoving Sally aside with one arm.

Chaos erupted around them. From her own grapple with the first assailant she became aware of a few things. There were three people here, two large, musclebound men, one of whom she was fighting and one of whom Josh was scrapping with. The third was a smaller man, fairer complected, and—Nora sucked in a deep breath, mainly to get her bearings, and then the smell hit her.

It was Liam.

Nora's insides plunged and she drove a knee deep into the stomach of the man she was fighting, trying to bring him down. It might as well have been fighting her car for all he moved with each hit. Frustration blossomed in her, hot and heavy, as she tried to get him down, get him to budge, get him to _get out of her way _so she could get to Liam and Aidan.

Aidan was up, eyes black, fangs drawn, circling back while facing Liam, who was not hunched and stalking the way a predator normally should. Instead he was straight-backed, calm, his hands slightly open in almost-claws, but all the ferocity he should be wearing was gone from his stance. It terrified Nora to see a man who had lost both his children look at their supposed murderer that way.

Sally was scrambling away from the second assailant, a shorter but stockier man, and Nora took in another breath—weres, both of them. Josh snarled and leapt between Sally and the man and the two of them locked in a grapple, Josh's peaceful face pulled back into something animalistic and savage. Sally got to her feet and ran for the cupboard, looking for God knew what, but Nora trusted she had a plan. She returned to keeping her opponent at bay the best she could.

She wished she could hear what Aidan was growling low at Liam, but all of her focus snapped back to the man who swung hard for her face. Nora jumped backwards but wasn't able to fend off the full brunt of the hit, and she slammed into a side table before careening off it to the floor a second later. Her head was buzzing and she tasted blood.

_Of course, _she thought grimly as she rolled to the side to avoid a boot-stomp from the man who was still after her. _They would come the night before the full moon to avoid dealing with wolves. _Liam and his cronies, with years of experience under their belts, knew how to use their pre-moon boosts better than Josh or she would. To attack during the full moon meant possibly going against Josh and Nora in their wolf forms, so it was wiser to strike now and avoid that. For a moment she had really believed that he wouldn't be back. It seemed like a grievous, unforgivable oversight now.

Nora dove between the man's legs, aiming up for a critical blow with her elbow, but he jumped aside and kept his family jewels intact. From the kitchen there was a curse and the sound of things crashing to the ground, and Nora caught sight of Josh grabbing hold of his opponent and actually slamming him down into the ground with upper body strength alone. He always fought better the angrier he was, and so long as they kept targeting Sally, who wasn't actively fighting any of them back, Josh was getting more and more of a strength boost.

Something hit the far wall so hard that the ruined shelves they had only just fixed from the impact Erin had made against them shattered again. Nora rolled aside to avoid her attacker and saw that Liam and Aidan were locked in a death match, moving so quickly she could scarcely keep up. Even on death's door Aidan was not an opponent to be taken lightly, but Liam was a healthy, grown wolf with the moon on his side. Her heart sank as she realized the fight would not last long.

She paid for her moment of distraction. The man grasped a handful of her hair and Nora let out a strangled shout, hands grasping at her scalp as he pulled her straight up and off her feet. The pain was blinding, but Nora managed to keep her wits about her and struck out straight back with a hard, solid kick. This time the man was not so lucky, and she could feel him stagger as her strike hit home. Her feet touched ground and she almost sank to her knees in relief, but he still had a firm grip on her hair.

A gunshot rang out and Nora jerked from the sound of it alone. Then she was dragged swiftly down by what felt like dead weight. Nora's first thought was to wrench her head from side to side to try to free herself, and in a moment of shock she realized the hand that had been clutching at her scalp was loosening its grip.

Sally stood in the nook under the stairs, having shot her assailant in the back at almost point-blank range. Her dark eyes were wide and though she was twitching a little, her hands were steady on the weapon. Nora twisted the rest of the way out from under the dead weight, but before she could approach Sally, Josh let out a yelp of pain.

Nora only got to see him crash straight through their living room window into the street below. Then his attacker was free and he had decided Sally was the next biggest threat. He charged and Nora snarled, leaping to intercept him. For a time she was utterly unaware of everything that was taking place, her only thoughts on keeping the man away from her friends.

At some point Josh had returned to help her, and the two of them ganged up on her assailant, which proved to be too much for him. Sally had disappeared, but when two more gunshots rang out in rapid succession Nora couldn't help but look to the source. Sally had missed Liam both times, and in one motion the elder were threw Aidan to the ground and charged Sally, impossibly fast. Nora's heart stopped and she felt more than saw Josh snap the neck of the man they were fighting, still unaware of what was about to happen.

Nora didn't know if it was intentional or not, but Sally threw the gun, and as it arced in the air Aidan reached up and caught it. He was a mess, one arm clearly broken and pressed against his bleeding side, but he managed to snag it from the air without setting it off in his face. Aidan flipped the gun to hold it the proper way, and Josh, his face unrecognizable with a kind of murderous rage she had never seen on him, turned to face Aidan and Liam as if in slow motion.

Sally was in Liam's grasp, but he seemed to be holding her as collateral, aware she was no longer armed and that he was in a predicament.

"Drop her," Aidan snarled, and as Liam looked over, not at Aidan, but to Josh, Nora knew what card he was going to play next.

"You have him pull that trigger and you're cursed for life," he whispered to Josh, his quiet voice nevertheless perfectly audible to the rest of them.

Almost before he had finished speaking, Josh shouted, "Do it!" to Aidan.

And it was a mark of how they understood one another; if she was being perfectly honest with herself, Nora knew she would have hesitated. She would have been caught up in guilt, fear, worry, doubt, and she would have faltered, unsure how to find the gumption and the strength of will to pull the trigger and sentence Josh to a life as something he hated.

Aidan didn't hesitate; he pulled the trigger.

Later Nora would realize what it meant, in the broader sense, beyond silencing Liam forever and ending his reign of terror against him. Nora loved Josh, and would have faltered at the thought of being responsible for his misery. Aidan loved Josh perhaps more, because he was perfectly willing to take that on, knowing that what Josh really wanted in the end was to see Liam go down, even if it meant he was sentenced to a life with the curse.

Nora didn't even have time to sag in relief, or even comprehend that they were no longer in danger. Liam had barely hit the ground when Aidan did too, his body seized with wracking, violent convulsions. A half-breath half-sob tore from Nora's throat as Josh's face twisted into an expression of abject, horrific dread, and in a second he was beside Aidan, propping him up in his arms, babbling things she couldn't hear.

_This is it, _she thought, feeling too much and feeling numb at the same time as Sally moved in to pull her into a hug.


	14. The only

It was the longest night of Josh's life.

He didn't move an inch from where Aidan had fallen, and it was only when he felt a lancing pain in his left leg that he realized they were both asleep, trapped under him at an odd angle. He didn't move to adjust; he didn't even give it another second of thought after the initial realization. The pain almost felt good, almost kept him grounded and anchored to a world that threatened to break apart and fall away, to cease making sense forever.

He kept waiting for Aidan to turn to dust in his arms. With every second that ticked by Josh tried to take him in, to devote himself to committing all the little things to memory. Somewhere in the first half-hour of his fever Aidan had drifted off and had not awoken since. Josh had the terrible, frozen feeling that he never would again.

Sally and Nora came and went quietly, mostly staying nearby and keeping silent vigil with him, but sometimes going off to clean up a little bit of the house. Concerned neighbors had come to inquire over the shattered windows and Josh wasn't sure how the girls were able to keep them at bay. He couldn't bring himself to care. _Come on in, _he thought dully, curling himself a little lower over Aidan's prone form. _Who were we kidding, thinking we could hide all of this from the world forever? _What did it even matter if the whole neighborhood knew what they were?

Somewhere inside Josh knew it wasn't fair to be thinking this way. Just because this was the end of his world didn't mean he should stop giving a shit. Aidan wouldn't want that, and he'd talked his friend back from enough "I've lived long enough, I don't want to try anymore" spells to realize that no good ever came from it. As dark as the future was, as terrified as Josh felt, it seemed stupid. If wasting his last few weeks with Aidan by being in denial over what he felt was dumb, wasting his last few hours with him being miserable was even worse. These were the seconds that counted, and Josh needed to make them count.

"Hey," Josh muttered quietly, smoothing back Aidan's matted hair with one hand. It was such an intimate, tender gesture, and it took him off guard how much he needed to do it. "It's okay, you know," he continued, his voice hardly carrying even to his own ears. "I know you're always—you're always worried about us, thinking about how to look after everyone. I know what probably scares you most of all right now is what's going to happen to everyone. I just…"

Josh took in a deep, steadying breath, a knot of something rising in his core that was a cousin to panic but so much deeper, more pervasive and undefeatable. Would he ever be able to get out from under this? He didn't know the answer, but he knew somehow it didn't matter. What mattered now was Aidan, whether he could hear him or not; what mattered was trying to give him some semblance of peace.

"I just want you to know it's alright. We're okay."

It felt weird to say that to Aidan, as if they'd be fine in the aftermath of his death—could anything be farther from the truth? But even as he said the words he could feel Aidan relaxing a little more against him, turning his face against Josh's chest. Josh felt like he was suffocating and focused on breathing, blinking back tears as he tried to shelter him from things beyond his control.

Their positions were reversed now, he thought dimly to himself as the night wore on. When they had first met it had been Josh who was crumpled up on himself on the floor, kicked and dirty, at one of the lowest points of his life. Why Aidan had picked him to defend he'd never know. Why he himself chose to trust Aidan in turn when other members of his kind had just decided to beat the shit out of him, he'd also never know. So many little choices, small turns here or there, split-second decisions, had lead him right to this moment, which like no other moment before it, seemed to crystallize and focus in so sharply that it felt like the pinnacle of all things. He had been so close to bowing out of the camping trip at the last minute. He hadn't been feeling well and Julia had been hinting she wanted to do some more wedding shopping with him that weekend instead. If he'd never been in the woods he'd never have encountered Ray, never would have met Aidan. Likewise, it had been a toss-up between Boston and about five other places to relocate; the night the other vampires had decided to pick on the new wolf had been a night Josh had seriously considered spending tucked under a bridge somewhere. Five seconds earlier or later and this would be one branch of an ever-expanding tree of "maybes," its tendrils of light and possibility growing dark as a different future was chosen.

Five seconds earlier to save Aidan from Liam's changing den and they wouldn't be here. Aidan would have gotten better, they might be watching _When Harry Met Sally _still. There wouldn't be three corpses to dispose of, half of their house wrecked, and the man he had slowly come to realize he loved, desperately, more than anything, wouldn't be crumpled in a heap in his arms.

When the sun poked its fingers through the hastily-boarded window Josh could scarcely believe it was going on seven or eight in the morning. It felt like simultaneously no time and great expanses of time had passed in the interim.

Aidan was bloody. It had been happening slowly, and though Josh knew there was little that could hurt him anymore, it still wounded him to see the little droplets of red leaking from his eyes and ears. It reminded him vaguely of the first time Aidan had tried his blood, back when he was fully wolf, and the subsequent choking, heaving seizure that had taken place after it. It would be something, if after all this, Aidan's body was choosing to have a reaction to Josh's blood after all.

Josh became aware of his surroundings again, slowly. Sally was kneeling beside him. She looked up at him, her big brown eyes tearful, and asked, "Is he…?"

"I think he's still with us," Josh muttered quietly, not wanting to disturb Aidan though there had been no concrete proof he could hear anything they said.

Sally merely nodded, reaching out and brushing the backs of her fingers along Aidan's jawline. Josh watched the progress of her hand, his eyes heavy with exhaustion and a feeling that couldn't be described as grief, because it lacked definity yet. Nora returned from the kitchen, where she'd been emptying one of what felt like hundreds of dustpan loads full of debris, and kneeled down beside them too.

"Do you think he can even… pass on… without…" Sally gestured, then made up a term. "Going all dust?"

"No, I don't think so," Aidan mumbled.

Nora jumped and Sally actually let out a stifled little half-scream coupled with a spastic motion. Josh just stared at him, wide-eyed and unbelieving.

"_Aidan?_" Sally breathed, crawling forward to stare at him. "Holy shit! How… you're awake?"

"So it would seem," Aidan said, blinking very slowly and shifting a little in Josh's arms. Josh knew he should let him claim some autonomy, maybe sit up, but he couldn't bring himself to let go. His heart was pounding.

"How do you…" Josh asked, but his voice cracked and died before he could get out the word, _feel?_

Aidan sniffed heavily, exactly like someone suffering a head cold, and tested out his muscles. "... Not…" he mumbled, twisting slightly, tentatively. "Not bad."

Josh's heart had switched tactics, going from beating itself against his ribs to leaping into his throat. "Can I…?" he asked, unable to finish any sentences today.

"Go for it," Aidan said, leaning back a bit more so Josh could fumble with the hem of his shirt and lift it up. Nora gasped and clasped her hands over her mouth, looking like she was going to cry, and Sally mirrored her position except for the huge smile that broke out over her face.

Aidan's spots were gone, little smudges of dark red in their place. Josh reached out with a trembling hand and wiped at some of the color, which came away from his flesh, leaving the paleness underneath exposed, unmarred. Some of the stuff—dried blood, he thought—was caked to parts of him that had been more exposed during the night, and Josh chipped at some with his nail.

Aidan squirmed a little. "Ticklish," he complained, and Nora of all people threw herself onto him in a crushing hug.

"You're _better_," she said, punching the last word with a barely-contained sob. "You _are _better?" she reworded it, sounding fearful, like they would realize it wasn't true in a moment.

"I think so," Aidan said, giving her a warm, tight hug in return. "I have no idea how."

Josh shuddered, a hollow feeling in his chest that simultaneously felt like it was filled with heat so unbearable he couldn't possibly survive it. "You don't think, maybe…?"

Nora was falling to pieces, but still managed to press a hand against Aidan's forehead. "I can't… tell, you're a vampire, but… you're sweaty. Like you broke a fever."

Aidan frowned at that, something a lot like wonder on his face. "So… what, what made this different for me?" he asked aloud, but Sally dove on top of Nora and Aidan, looking up at Josh with a smile that seemed like it contained a secret and was broadcasting that same secret for all the world to see at the same time.

"Josh did," she said, and Aidan looked up to meet his eyes, his expression of bemused curiosity fading into the soft, tentative look he only gave him. Josh tried his best to hug all of them, a sound that wasn't quite laughter or sobbing tearing itself free from his throat.

"Were blood," Nora sniffed heavily, her body almost completely buried in their dogpile. "How the hell…"

"I don't even know, but I don't care," Sally said, and although she'd been all smiles up until this point, a tremor shook through her and she seemed to shrink into their mass, untold tension seeping from her small frame as she gave off a sound that was suspiciously like a watery sniff.

"Drama queens," Aidan accused, his voice carrying so much fondness it only made Nora have to choke back another sob and Josh dissolve into more confusing laughter. He buried his face in Aidan's neck, felt the vampire's head leaning against his, and knew,.

* * *

_Author's note: The end, guys. Thanks for sticking with me :) Epilogue to come at some point probably, but in the meantime…_

_Check out my new Being Human AU fic, chapter one of which is posted on my profile now. It's Arc One of a series called "Favor," because apparently I love one-word fic titles!_


End file.
